E.Gulbis’ laboratory says that the tests offered by several manufacturers have also been tested on site, testing people for whom Covid-19 had already been approved. The accuracy of the tests of individual manufacturers was only 20-30%.
Finally, the laboratory adhered to antibody tests with an accuracy of 96-97%. Examination of people who were ill revealed that antibodies began to form between 10 and 14 days of illness. However, as the examples of specific patients show, not everyone is equal. Both the rate at which antibodies are formed and the amount of antibodies vary. However, the question for further research is how long they last.
In the meantime, it can already be said whether the results of the antibody tests change the current picture of the prevalence of Covid-19.
Of the more than a thousand persons with a previously unconfirmed disease who performed the analysis in E. Gulbis’ laboratory for interest, the antibodies were confirmed in only three cases.
In addition, all of these people had returned from abroad, one of them was ill abroad, but the classic virus test was not performed there. “Of those who had thought that they had fallen ill before – at the end of last year, at the beginning of the year – we did not detect any antibodies here in Latvia,” emphasizes Didzis Gavars, a doctor and board member of E.Gulbis’ laboratory.
A higher proportion is shown by the results of the Central Laboratory – out of 633 tests, 19 samples showed antibodies. However, the Central Laboratory has not yet carried out an in-depth analysis of these data, so it is not known how many of these 19 are already aware of their illness.
In addition, false positives and false negatives are still not ruled out. This is why it is not recommended to take and read them yourself without a doctor’s advice. This is also acknowledged in the Swan Laboratory, where in some cases possible false results have been calculated.
Laboratory doctor Jānis Stašulāns says: “Observation in dynamics, in connection with other laboratory parameters, helps us to answer this question, and like any laboratory test, it can be assessed together with the patient’s medical history, complaints, findings and other diagnostic methods.”
These tests are not only in the interest of private laboratories. When Covid-19 was detected in 63 people at the Blue Cross Shelter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to perform antibody tests on the remaining 40 shelter-related people who were not tested for the virus in the classical test. Antibodies were found in half of them. After that, the employees of the social care center “Gaiļezers” were tested. Of the 18 employees, two had antibodies. But the plan includes antibody tests at Cēsis Clinic and Mārsnēni Nursing Home.
This analysis is performed in the Reference Laboratory of the Eastern Hospital, whose chief specialist Sergei Nikišin until relatively recently assessed these tests with caution.
However, he now acknowledges that both the specification of these tests, namely the ability to recognize antibodies to a particular virus, and the sensitivity have improved.
Yuri Perevoshchikov, an epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC), says people with antibodies would not need isolation in the event of an outbreak. If they are, for example, employees of hospitals or care centers, they could continue to work. Covid-19 antibodies could also be tested in blood donors in the near future. According to Yuri Perevoshchikov, in the event of a donor with high levels of antibodies, his plasma with antibodies could possibly be used to treat more severely ill patients. In addition, testing the donated blood would be a kind of random sample that would also allow us to judge general trends.
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The SPKC also reveals that more research could be done in the autumn to understand how many of us have antibodies, how long they last, and what the overall level of immunity in society might be. However, it is already clear that it will not be possible to talk about a sufficient level of collective immunity to protect against new waves of outbreaks. Therefore, other measures to control the disease will be still relevant.
The fact that collective immunity does not develop so quickly is also confirmed by the example of Sweden. There, the acquisition of collective immunity was one of the reasons why strict restrictions were not needed. However, more extensive antibody studies show that in the country’s capital, Stockholm, antibodies were detected in 7.3% of blood samples. Therefore, other means must be waited to overcome the disease. “There are the first reports of drugs that may have been approved, but we will still see how effective they are. We will also talk about vaccines in the spring in the optimistic case, because clinical trials are taking place, ”says J. Perevoščikovs.
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