Denver Pathologist Explains Role Of Coronavirus Antibody Tests
DENVER (CBS4) - The state said on Wednesday it plans to deploy hundreds of thousands of antibody tests in the near term. For those tested, it means learning if they've been infected. For researchers, it's the start to learning much more.
"The most important thing that we can do with the serology tests today, is truly understand the denominator, or the number of people who have been in contact or had infection with COVID-19 so that we can understand the true fatality rate," said Dr. Heather Signorelli, Vice President and Chief Laboratory Office with HCA Healthcare, the parent company of the HealthONE system of hospitals in the Denver metro area.
Signorelli is based in Denver but oversees labs in more than 180 hospitals across the nation.
"This has absolutely been the busiest time that any of us have ever seen. Our primary role right now at least in the response to COVID-19, is making sure that everyone of our hospitals the test kits and the swabs and media to perform the testing that we need for our patients," she said.
Signorelli, who has a background in pathology, says as the antibody tests come in, there are people working not only to identify COVID-19 antibodies, but working to learn more.
"We're testing those who are asymptomatic and trying to understand, is there a high prevalence of people with shedding virus who are not symptomatic? And actually, our rates are much lower than what we had anticipated," said Signorelli. "We're not doing that in the state of Colorado but in another state and so we're quickly evaluating you know, how frequently do patients who don't present with symptoms could be shedding the virus and in that state it was actually less than 3 percent. Now, granted, we still have a lot of work to do to continue to collect that. We have not published that data but we're working to continue to evaluate that and understand what the true risk is."
She said while the antibody test can currently help paint a more accurate picture of the numbers and who has had the virus, there are important questions antibody tests cannot currently answer.
"Serology doesn't provide information on if you're protected or not, or if you're going to get reinfected or not, so it's not really a test that we can use to say, okay you can return to work whereas you need to continue to quarantine at home.," said Signorelli.
She said that shouldn't discourage people from getting the test.
"In terms of what you do with that information clinically, or what could somebody do, [for instance] could you start walking around with no masks on and disregard any social distancing, I would say, we don't have the evidence to support that right now," said Signorelli. "So, while it's interesting, it shouldn't change your behavior, which I think is really important for the public to understand."
National Jewish Health announced on Wednesday it would offer antibody testing for a fee and by appointment. Hospitals under HCA Healthcare said they will offer testing through urgent cares and physician practices, which will be sent to LabCorp and Quest.
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