What is Antibody Testing? What Role Is It Playing in the Pandemic?
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Let’s talk about Antibody testing. This topic has been circulating pretty much every news source lately. So, what is it and how important is it to you and your employees? Let’s dive in.
What Is Antibody Testing?
So, what is all of the hype about? Antibody testing is basically a test that identifies if someone has had a past infection of COVID-19. According to the CDC, antibodies are proteins that the body creates to help fight infections. Individuals who test positive for these antibodies were in fact infected with the Coronavirus at some point.
Antibody tests are NOT for those who feel that they currently have symptoms of the virus, the purpose of this testing is not for initial diagnosis and should not be confused with diagnostic testing.
What Can We Learn From Antibody Testing?
One of the most important goals of testing is to determine how many people in the United States have actually contracted the Coronavirus. This is a way to uncover how many individuals have recovered from the virus, How many individuals were a-symptomatic or exhibited mild symptoms and/or never underwent a diagnostic test.
Another goal of antibody testing is to determine whether individuals who have been infected with the Coronavirus build up any level of immunity to it. This basically means that if you get the virus once, how likely are you to be infected again?
In some cases antibodies allow the body to build up immunity to the virus, like with chicken pox. If you had the chicken pox once in your life and are exposed to it later, you are unlikely to contract it a second time.
Developing antibodies is one of the reasons that you don’t generally get the flu twice during one flu season even if you are exposed to it multiple times. This information is extremely valuable to scientists who are researching and tracking the Coronavirus.
How Accessible is Antibody Testing?
The CDC is the authority on antibody testing and the FDA has fast tracked the approval of certain antibody tests using Emergency Use Authorization. For more information on getting an antibody test administered, you must reach out to your healthcare provider to see if they are offering this type of testing. To give your employees more information on the coverage of antibody testing, it is a good idea to reach out to your health insurance provider to see what they are offering.
For more information from the experts be sure to check out the CDC website.
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