AstraZeneca, a British-based pharmaceutical firm said that it will have a reliable coronavirus antibody test ready in three weeks as they aim to deliver it by May. The test will detect substances created and stored by the immune system when a person gets ill.
Human immune system makes proteins called antibodies in response to an infection. People are believed to be at least partly immune to coronavirus in the future if that person develops coronavirus-specific antibodies in their body.
Using antibody test kits we will be able to determine whether someone has been infected already and is likely immune.
The Cambridge-based drug giant said making the drug could be scaled up by the end of May. However, just a day after the reserahc shows that a lot of recovered coronavirus patients have barely-detectable signs of antibodies.
Around one-third of recovered patients have very low levels of antibodies in their blood which makes them hard to test for, revealed by the Chinese study.
Despite promises that the UK was in the pipeline, the British experts said the results explain why the UK has repeatedly delayed rolling the tests out to the public.
AstraZeneca's UK president, Tom Keith-Roach, said that the goal is for people to be able to carry out antigen and antibody testing in their own homes.
It is believed that rolling the test out to the public is an important step in helping society return to normal as the test will show who is safe to go back to work without the risk of catching or infecting other people of CVOID-19.
"Clinicians across the country are trying to do absolutely everything possible right now to keep patients out of the healthcare system and to deliver diagnostics of care at home - to not expose patients for unnecessary risk. That will be the principle here," Mr Keith-Roach said.
Chinese antibody study
In the latest article from Science Times, it reveals that there are recovered patients tested in China with very low levels of antibodies. Most of the young patients had surprisingly few antibodies.
Levels of the antibodies rose with age such as those patients aged between 6 and 85 displayed antibodies triple the amount as people in the 15-39 age group. This confirms that the disease is most lethal when it triggers an extreme immune response and that patients that are over 70 years old are the most at risk of dying from the coronavirus.
Professor in medicine and infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Paul Hunter said that the research in China has relevance to the current debate about antibody tests in the UK.
"If many people only produce low levels of antibodies to coronavirus then any community test would need to have high sensitivity. This provides further insight about why community antibody tests in the UK have not yet been authorized for use," Hunter added.
Dashing hopes of lockdown ending
Professor Sir John Campbell of Oxford said it will at least take a month before antibody tests would be available for the public as many false positive and false negative are seen which is not a good result for the government.
This means that dashing hopes of lockdown ending might not any time soon.
Read Also: Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready in Six Months, Says Oxford University
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