Antibody tests start today

Monday 15 June 2020

Front line health care workers and people who had corona virus symptoms early on in the Bailiwick's outbreak will be offered antibody testing from this week, as Public Health aims to find a clearer picture of how many people have had the potentially fatal virus.

Yesterday marked 45 days since the last patient was tested positive for covid-19 in Guernsey, with no known active cases so far this month.

In total 252 people tested positive for the virus in Guernsey between March and May, with no one testing positive in any of the other islands of the Bailiwick. All have since recovered except for the 13 people who are confirmed to have died after testing positive for covid-19. There were also three deaths locally during the outbreak which are presumed to be linked with the virus, but those people hadn't been tested before passing away. 

Testing continues locally for covid-19 with 19 people awaiting tests results yesterday, according to the most recent data available from the States.

Pictured: The statistics released by the States on Sunday 14 June. 

With the likelihood of more people having had the virus than those officially listed, antibody testing is now starting to find out how much more widespread it was.

Many people are known to have had the virus worldwide but were asymptomatic - others may have had the virus earlier in the local outbreak when testing was limited due to the constraints imposed by using the UK to assess samples taken locally.

When testing was able to start in Guernsey the number of samples being assessed daily increased dramatically.

The Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink, said the antibody testing will be targeted to those who they think were most at risk of having the virus first, and then it will be offered to members of the public who may have had the virus already.

"..starting off with health and care workers who've worked on the front line, to see how many of those are antibody positive," said Dr Brink. 

"But also we're going to be offering testing to those in March and beginning of April who had clinical symptoms suggestive of covid-19, but, as you are aware, at that stage we were limited by the number of tests we could do because we were required to send samples to the UK. So, now we've got the antibody test available so we'll be doing it on those groups of individuals."

The antibody tests will be offered to other people once those on the front line and those believed to have had the virus after presenting with covid-19 symptoms have been tested.

Pictured top: Dr Nicola Brink.