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. 2022 Jun 5:10.1111/imr.13091. Online ahead of print. doi: 10.1111/imr.13091

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© 2022 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This article is being made freely available through PubMed Central as part of the COVID-19 public health emergency response. It can be used for unrestricted research re-use and analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source, for the duration of the public health emergency.

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Layered defenses against SARS‐CoV‐2, or the “Swiss cheese” model of immunity. Multiple types of adaptive immunity with diverse mechanisms and locations likely provide layers of defense against COVID‐19. Conceptually, layered defenses are like a “Swiss cheese model”: even though each layer is imperfect, all together they make it highly unlikely that the pathogen breaches all of the layers of defense. Graphic inspired by the masking and public health layered defenses Swiss cheese model of Ian M. Mackay