We are looking for anything that will help us with this Covid-19 outbreak. A drug, a vaccine, a test, a containment method, anything. An article was posted in the New York Times labeled, “Will a Coronavirus Antibody Test Allow Us to Go Back to Work or School?” First of all, I understand the concern with how this virus has disrupted our lives, but why don’t we name the article “Will a Coronavirus Antibody Test Allow Us to Diagnose and Prevent the Spread of the Coronavirus?” It just seems like maybe that’s what we should be more focused on. Anyways, the article discusses the possibility of using these antibody tests to see if an individual has or has ever had the Coronavirus. If they have had the virus, they are considered to be immune and there is a thought about possibly distributing “certificates of immunity” to allow people to return to work. So what are these antibody tests looking for? They are looking for the body’s immune response mainly through the levels of antibodies IgM and IgG which serve a different role throughout the course of the immune response.
IgM is the first type of these antibodies to appear with an immune response and is a very general type of antibody that is present to fight off invaders. The levels of IgM will spike within the first few days of infection since they are the initial fighters. The next antibody to respond is IgG. This antibody has the ability to target specific viruses such as the coronavirus, but take longer to reach their peak. As the IgG levels rise, the IgM levels lower. These are the two main antibodies in focus for the antibody tests. Titers will reveal if a person has ever been exposed to the virus. A positive IgM titer would mean that a person was recently infected, a positive IgG titer would mean it has been 28 days or less since a person was first exposed, and if both are positive, this would mean a person is currently in the midst of an infection. If a person is only IgM positive or both IgM and IgG positive, they are currently infected, whereas if they are only IgG positive, this means they were infected in the past, but are no longer infectious.
Stanford Medicine has created a test that will detect the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. This article tells us that most of the tests being used right now are genetic tests looking for the Coronavirus, but this antibody test will survey the blood plasma for the presence of antibodies indicating an immune response. These tests only take 2-3 days to get results. This would be incredible to have widely available for testing because, as of right now, it is taking approximately two weeks to get some of the tests back, meaning there is a lot of time for someone to worry about spreading the virus before they actually know if they have it or not. Since the test is relatively new, there are still a lot of unknowns about the antibodies and what the levels may indicate. One thing they mentioned, which I found very interesting, was that this kind of testing would have the capability to determine how many of those in the population have had the virus but have shown little to no symptoms. The longer this virus persists, the more discoveries we are making and the closer we are getting to a cure and accurate diagnostics.
Magnifying Microbiology 