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The new “Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2” test can detect antibodies with “100 percent accuracy,” according to research by the UK Public Health Authority.
In the UK, the test is now expected to be the way out of the national crown quarantine that risks jeopardizing the country’s economy that is already threatened by Brexit.
Although still unclear, this would open up for more Britons to return to their workplaces, especially health care personnel.
100 percent accuracy
The tests were conducted by experts from Public Health England, the British equivalent of the Public Health Authority, who showed that the antibody test was “highly specific, with 100 percent specificity.”
“This is a very positive development, as such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of previous infection,” Professor John Newton, national coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing program, told Sky News.
However, he emphasizes that it is still unclear how long a person is immune to covid-19 after they have recovered.
Warns about antibody testing
However, the public health authority has warned against reliance on antibody testing, even those with very high specificity, as knowledge about covid-19 is still lacking.
Karin Tegmark Wisell, head of the Public Health Authority, said during the authorities’ regular press conference last week that they advise people not to be tested for antibodies.
“A good test can give a fairly certain message of whether or not you have had an infection, but we are concerned that people will come to conclusions about how they might relate to the infection,” he said.
– We still know very little about how this virus infects and how immunity works so that you feel safe if you have antibodies.
Available in Sweden: can produce millions of tests per week
The test was developed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, and has been in Sweden since the end of April.
According to Roche’s own tests, the overall specificity is 99.81 percent, and the test does not respond to any of the other four common coronaviruses that humans are infected with (including the one that causes a cold).
– The combination of very high specificity and sensitivity provides a reliable test that can be used both to provide responses to people and to see the big picture, such as prevalence in the workplace in healthcare or prevalence in a region or across the country. says Magnus Göransson, CEO of Roche Diagnostics in Sweden.
The company says the plan is to produce several million tests per week, and that production will be gradually expanded.
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