T cell assays are very labor intensive indeed, and the sample sizes in the papers on them tend to be in the 10s. The Oxford Immunotec people are trying to improve that. “There has. . .never been great demand for wading into the intricacies of T cell tests.” The test is definitely better at determining whether a person has had a previous coronavirus infection (as opposed to antibody measurements), and if we put that together with the other papers mentioned, it could be that this extends to saying how much protection these people retain. So the story is coming together. And just as vaccine work is never going to be the same after the huge amounts of work during this pandemic, it looks like T-cell research is never going to be the same, either. They’re both going to be better, faster, and more detailed, and that’s good. Because we’re going to need all this again some day.

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