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COVID-19: Immunology, vaccines and epidemiology

Free statement of participation on completion

This free badged course, COVID-19: Immunology, vaccines and epidemiology, explains how antibodies protect against viral infections and how the incidence of antibodies can be used to track an epidemic. The course incorporates an interactive on-line assay (ELISA) of the type that is used to detect antibodies against COVID-19 infection. The samples in the assay correspond to serum-samples from the UK population in August 2021, when a minority of population had been infected with COVID-19 and 70% vaccinated. Antibody detection (serology) can distinguish people who have been vaccinated from those previously infected. The course also outlines the different biological strategies that were deployed in developing vaccines against COVID-19.

This course forms part of the Dangoor Education course collection, the educational arm of The Exilarch's Foundation.

This course is accredited by the CPD Standards Office. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development and on successful completion of the course you will be awarded 24 CPD points. Evidence of your CPD achievement is provided on the free Statement of Participation awarded on completion.

Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Earn this free Open University digital badge if you complete this course! The badge can be displayed, shared and downloaded as a marker of your achievement. The badge is awarded for completing the course and passing the quizzes.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

understand how the immune system protects against viral infection
detect antibodies against COVID-19, using the ELISA technique
distinguish individuals who have had a COVID-19 infection, from those who have had a COVID-19 vaccination
understand how the detection of antibodies (serology) can be used to track an epidemic
understand the different strategies developed for producing vaccines against COVID-19.

Enter course

First Published: 18/07/2023

Updated: 18/07/2023

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Course content

- Introduction and guidance
- Current section:
  Introduction and guidance
  Have you ever wondered why some people are very badly affected by a particular viral infection, while others are asymptomatic? Differences in the effectiveness of their immune systems play a part, but so do the type of virus, genetic variability in the human population, and whether a person has any immunity from previous infections or vaccination.This free badged course, COVID-19: Immunology, vaccines and epidemiology, will take you through some of the key science that underpinned the global...
  - What is a badged course?
  - How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- Week1Week 1: How the body recognises a viral infection
- Current section:
  Introduction
  This week, you will be introduced to a range of acute and chronic viral infections, focusing on acute viral infections. You will take a close look at influenza-A and SARS-CoV2, the causative agent of COVID-19, as key examples – not just because of the recent pandemic but also because they are very informative. The role of antibodies in protection against viral disease and reinfection is an important component of immunity. This area, and vaccine development, will be discussed later in the ...
- 1 Viral infections
  - 1.1 Acute infections
  - 1.2 Chronic and latent infections
- 2 The anatomy of a virus
- 3 Recognition of viral infection
- 4 Week 1 quiz
- 5 Summary
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 1 practice quiz
- Week2Week 2: How the immune system combats viral infection
- Current section:
  Introduction
  During the COVID-19 pandemic, you will have heard a lot about antibodies and how vaccines induce neutralising antibodies that protect against infection. But antibodies are just one element of immune defence. Do you remember hearing about T cells and immunological memory? This week you will learn more about these and about the range of adaptive immune responses that combat viruses and deal with virus-infected cells.By the end of this week you should be able to:describe how T cells and NK ...
- 1 Adaptive immune defences
- 2 Immunological memory
  - 2.1 Phases of the immune response
  - 2.2 Overview of adaptive immune responses
- 3 Antibodies
- 4 Week 2 quiz
- 5 Summary
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 2 practice quiz
- Week3Week 3: ELISA – enzyme linked immunosorbent assay
- Current section:
  Introduction
  In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a fair number of people thought that they had been infected with SARS-CoV2, but they had not had serious symptoms or typical symptoms of infection. But how could they know that it was COVID-19? Perhaps they had just had a regular cold. In the earliest months, qPCR and lateral flow tests for SARS-CoV2 were not widely available. By the time these tests were available, the virus would have long since gone from the body, and these tests would show a ...
- 1 Measuring antibodies by ELISA
- 2 Interpreting and reporting results
- 3 Week 3 quiz
- 4 Summary
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 3 practice quiz
- Week4Week 4: Screening for SARS-CoV2 antibodies
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Knowing the proportion of people in a population that are immune to an infectious disease is really important – but why? One reason is that it can tell you something about how quickly an infection will spread or whether it will die out. Once a sufficient proportion of the population is immune to an infectious agent, then it will die out, or at least that strain of the pathogen will disappear, because there are insufficient susceptible individuals to maintain a chain of disease transmission. ...
- 1 Background to the investigation
- 2 Prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV2
  - 2.1 Laboratory investigation
- 3 Data interpretation
- 4 Week 4 quiz
- 5 Summary
- Glossary
- Acknowledgements
- Week 4 compulsory badge quiz
- Week5Week 5: Tracking infection
- Current section:
  Introduction
  How can one use antibodies to track infection? This week we start to look into the field of serology, the use of antibodies to identify infectious agents or diagnose disease. You will also start to learn some epidemiology, the study of disease in populations and how they spread.By the end of this week, you should be able to:understand the difference between disease incidence and prevalencecalculate disease incidence from data providedoutline how serology can inform epidemiological ...
- 1 Aspects of epidemiology
  - 1.1 Incidence and prevalence
  - 1.2 Calculating disease incidence
- 2 Detecting infection
- 3 Laboratory investigation
  - 3.1 Data interpretation
- 4 Week 5 quiz
- 5 Summary
- Glossary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 5 practice quiz
- Week6Week 6: Epidemiology
- Current section:
  Introduction
  Do you remember the regular briefings given by the Chief Medical and Scientific Officers, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic? There was a lot of concern about whether the number of infections were increasing or decreasing because that determined the public health measures needed to control the epidemic. Later, when vaccines became available, control of the epidemic shifted away from this as the vaccination programme did the heavy-lifting.Public health measures such as closure of public ...
- 1 Epidemiology and modelling
- 2 Herd immunity and immunisation
  - 2.1 Herd immunity threshold
  - 2.2 Critical immunisation threshold (qc)
- 3 Laboratory investigation
- 4 Week 6 quiz
- 5 Summary
- Glossary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 6 practice quiz
- Week7Week 7: Vaccines
- Current section:
  Introduction
  The development of vaccines against SARS-CoV2 was the most important step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Before vaccines were available, public health measures were the only effective way of controlling the spread of infection and consequent disease. Once vaccines were available, infection rates slowed and more importantly, disease severity was reduced. This week we are going to look at the development and deployment of vaccines against COVID-19.
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Active and passive immunisation
- 2 Vaccination
  - 2.1 Laboratory investigation
  - 2.2 Comparison of vaccines
- 3 Vaccination programme
  - 3.1 Boosters and the duration of immunity
- 4 Week 7 quiz
- 5 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 7 practice quiz
- Week8Week 8: Variants and immunity
- Current section:
  Introduction
  At the start of the pandemic there was a lot of concern about how much the SARS-CoV2 virus would mutate, whether this would produce more serious disease, or whether immunity would fail and people would be subject to reinfections, and illness. Later, once vaccines became available, there was a real worry that new variants would completely evade the antibody response produced by the vaccines, and they would have to be reformulated and vaccination programmes carried out every time a new variant...
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Variants of SARS-CoV2
- 2 Variants of concern
- 3 Evasion of immunity
- 4 Week 8 quiz
- 5 Summary
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week 8 compulsory badge quiz

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