"Drivethrough" antibody testing being investigated

Monday 30 March 2020

Having molecular testing on-island is a "game changer" which has significantly cut down waiting times for test results - now Public Health is exploring how antibody testing could be introduced to survey the entire population.

The availability of on-island testing was announced by the States today and the Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink, said it would make a huge difference to the testing process.

"We now have the molecular testing on island, which is direct detection via nose and throat swabs, which is really positive because now we can move into the real time case management," she said. "We can identify a case and within 24 hours we know exactly how they are, so this will be fundamental as we move forward to try and control the pandemic locally."

This had already been used to identify the positive tests from a residential care home, which were also announced earlier this afternoon. 

"We handled it at 10:00 [on Sunday morning], the samples were taken around 11, we tested through the afternoon and we got the results around 19:3030 in the evening, so it is fundamentally different testing on-island as we are able to manage the situation in real time, rather than waiting two to three days and then trying to manage a retrospective situation. The availability of on-island testing is a game changer for us."

Covid - 19 press conference - 30/03/2020 https://t.co/ibzCFUwIqF

— Gavin St Pier (@gavinstpier) March 30, 2020

Pictured: The press conference this afternoon was live streamed and can be played back if you missed it the first time.

Now that molecular testing is in place, our authorities are also exploring antibody and immunity testing, which would be available to front-line staff in the first instance. 

"We are looking at antibody tests, we have been assessing various kits and will see how we move forward on that," said Dr Brink. "With the antibody tests, the first group we would like to look at are health and care workers, those who have had an infection to see if they have antibodies.

"We're learning about this virus all the time and if someone has antibodies we are not sure if they have long term immunity ,but we think they will have some short to intermediate term immunity." 

"Those health care individuals would still wear personal protective equipment when dealing with infected individuals, but it would give us an additional level of confidence and give us an idea of the rate of infection within our health care staff."

Covid-19 has so far shown a spectrum of clinical symptoms and Dr Brink said community testing would increase Public Health's understanding of it. 

"From there we would like to do a larger scale survey across the population to get an idea of how many across the population have been infected," she said. "What we are looking to do is some kind of drive through testing to collate data and evidence of what is going on within the population [...] although that is still some way off."

Picture top: Dr Nicola Brink.