The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 represented the circulation of a new virus within the human population. The human immune system had to see and recognize a new pathogen, and not all individuals responded equally to the infection. The range of disease outcomes, as per other viral infections, was broad and driven by multiple factors. The high level of testing early during the pandemic, and participation from the population, led to the discovery and study of individuals that remain asymptomatic despite been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Even if asymptomatic disease is not unique to COVID, the ability to discover and sampled asymptomatic individuals has been challenging for other viruses. In addition, the introduction of new vaccine platform, mRNA-based vaccine, came with new challenges and questions about long term protection, side effects to the vaccine, and the impact of viral mutant on the acquired immunity. Lastly, while most of the population recovers after SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus insult has led to the development of persistent or new symptoms in a large part of the population for which there is currently little explanation, diagnostic or treatment available. Therefore, there is clearly a lot left to be discovered about COVID.
Our work aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of the immune response toward new pathogens like SARS-CoV-2 at the molecular and cellular level. This will contribute to understand COVID outcome, impact of vaccine, and long-term impact of the viral infection, information that could provide new avenue for drugs/vaccine as well as other viral infections.