ICMR Advises Antibody Tests In Areas Emerging As COVID-19 Hotspots

To ensure faster diagnosis of possible coronavirus cases, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has advised antibody tests in areas that are emerging as hotspots of COVID-19. This move will also help authorities save some time to contain the disease.

Right now, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is being used to identify the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The PCR test uses samples from the throat or nasal swab of people who show initial symptoms or who might have come in contact with a coronavirus patient to detect the virus.

Experts believe that conducting antibody tests will help identify people who have been able to fight off the infection and have become a "corona-blocker". The blood test will identify people who already have been infected, but have mild or no symptoms.

The antibody test results will be available in 15-30 minutes compared to the results of PCR tests which take up to five hours.

"Population in hotspot areas may be tested using a rapid antibody test. And antibody positives to be confirmed by RT-PCR (reverse transcription-PCR) using throat/nasal swab, and antibody negatives to be quarantined at home," Hindustan Times quoted the interim ICMR advisory as saying.

Antibody tests use blood samples to determine whether a person has antibodies against the virus. Antibodies in the immune system mean that even though the person was never tested for the disease, he or she had it at some point in the past, and has now recovered.

"To ensure there are no false positives or false negatives, we recommend confirmatory PCR-based tests for all positive results," an ICMR official said.

A link was released by ICMR, having information on all available CE-marked rapid SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests. The CE-In Vitro Diagnostic approved kits can be used after approval from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) and intimation to ICMR.

The decision to introduce antibody test kits can prove a gamechanger according to experts.

Earlier, ICMR had expressed interest to procure a million anti-body testing kits from manufacturers across the world, but the number was revised to half due to supply shortage. The first shipment is expected to arrive by April 5.

"These tests are expected to be very economical, simple and give results within 15-20 minutes. They are being used for contact-tracing in some countries. The Indian health system has a lot of experience in doing such tests, like the ones for dengue and chikungunya. So it will be easy to ramp up the screening. It is also a great tool for surveillance and building up epidemiological data. Indian companies would be able to produce them easily and at massive scale," Lalit Kant, a senior infectious disease expert, said.

He pointed out that since sophisticated equipment or highly trained manpower would not be necessary for the process, the move would ease workload off main laboratories.

"Mass screenings can be done using these tests to give us vital information on the number of people infected who never went to the hospital. It would give us an idea of the denominator to calculate fatality ratios," he said.

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