In Italy, the right antibodies may be needed to go back to work

There is a growing sense in Italy that the worst may have passed. The weeks of locking down the country, centre of the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, may be starting to pay off, as officials announced this week that the numbers of new infections had plateaued.

That glimmer of hope has turned the conversation to the daunting challenge of when and how to reopen without setting off another cataclysmic wave of contagion. To do so, Italian health officials and some politicians have focused on an idea that might once have been relegated to the realm of dystopian novels and science fiction films.

Having the right antibodies to the virus in one’s blood — a potential marker of immunity — may soon determine who gets to work and who does not, who is locked down and who is free. That debate is in some ways ahead of the science. Researchers are uncertain, if hopeful, that antibodies in fact indicate immunity. But that has not stopped politicians from grasping at the idea as they come under increasing pressure to open economies and avoid inducing a widespread economic depression.

The conservative president of the northeastern Veneto region has proposed a special “license” for Italians who possess antibodies that show they have had, and beaten, the virus. The former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, a liberal, has spoken about a “Covid Pass” for the uninfected. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that while the lockdown remained in place, the government had begun working with scientists to determine how to send people who have recuperated back to work. With its echoes of a “Brave New World,” the debate about how to reopen arrived in earnest this week in Italy. Like the virus’s crushing toll — some 14,681 dead in Italy as of Friday evening — the shift is ahead of countries like Spain, Britain and the United States, where the contagion is still on an upswing.

Italy was the first European country to announce a nationwide lockdown, which it began on March 9. But the rate of new infections slowed this week — on Friday, there were about 4,500 new cases, less than in recent weeks — leading officials and first responders alike to talk with guarded optimism.

“We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Fabio Arrighini, a supervisor of an ambulance hotline in the Lombardy town of Brescia, which has one of the highest death rates in Italy. “The calls have gone down.”

But the debate over an antibody-based work force has once again placed Italy at the unfortunate vanguard of Western democracies grappling with the virus, its uncomfortable ethical choices and inevitable aftermath. Such questions have already been raised by the wrenching decisions of doctors to treat the young, with a better chance of life, before the old and sick. But at some stage, nearly all governments will have to strike a balance between ensuring public safety and getting their countries running again. They may also find themselves weighing what is best for society against individual rights, using biological criteria in ways that almost certainly would be rejected absent the current emergency.

“It looks like it splits humanity into two, the strong and the weak,” said Michela Marzano, a professor of moral philosophy at the Paris Descartes University. “But this is actually the case.”

From an ethical perspective, she argued, the question of using antibodies as a basis for free movement reconciles a utilitarian vision of what is best for society with respect for individual humanity, by protecting “the most fragile, not marginalising them.” “It’s not discriminating,” she said. “It’s protecting.”

Scientists in Italy, like their counterparts in Germany, the United States, China and beyond, are already studying whether antibodies are a potential source of protection or immunity from the virus.

China has slowly reopened its economy, focusing on preventing another wave of infection arriving from overseas. In New York, Governor Andrew M Cuomo has envisioned a strategy in which younger people, and people who have antibodies showing they have been cured of the virus, can go back to work.

© 2020 The New York Times