Starting April 20, the Eureka Springs Hospital has received antibody test kits for Covid-19, tests for antibodies to the disease, not the virus itself.
Tina Adams, ESH laboratory and infection control director, said the tests are not diagnostic, they’re a screening test for IgG-IgM antibodies. The tests take 10 minutes to get results and are not FDA approved. But Adams said the tests could be helpful in helping prepare staff and patients to be more cautious if the patient tests positive for the antibodies.
“It gives us more information,” Adams said. “It’s all new. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to all our providers about this.
“Tests must be ordered by a physician. I have discussed this with our head emergency room doctor, and we will only be using this if a patient comes in sick with symptoms of Covid-19. Even if we get a positive antibody test, we would have to send out a diagnostic sample just like we are now. The patient would still have to be isolated or self-quarantined until we got those results back.”
Cost of the test is not known at this point.
A recent report by the Associated Press said research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared.
“The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says twenty-five percent of infected people might not have symptoms,” writer Marilynn Marchione said. “The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Hyten, thinks it may be as high as 60 to 70 percent among military personnel.
But the article also quotes Dr. Michael Mina, Harvard’s School of Public Health, as stating that none of these numbers can be fully trusted because they’re based on flawed and inadequate testing.
Theoretically, if someone tests positive for the antibodies and wasn’t seriously ill, they might be able to resume a normal life without social distancing or quarantining. They could travel and help restart the economy. But little is known about whether testing positive for the antibodies means the individual now has immunity to the virus. In China and South Korea, a small number of people survived the coronavirus and then became ill again. It is not known if people never completely recovered or if they got the illness twice.
Forbes magazine calls the issue of whether people can only get Covid-19 once “one of the biggest unanswered questions in the world at the moment.”