I was the family guinea pig for a new Covid antibody test
And the question is, asks SUE REID, if it shows you HAVE had it, can you really not catch it again?
ANTIBODY tests, which reveal whether you’ve had Covid-19, have been put forward as one of the ways we can safely getting people back to work. Here, Mail writers undergo two versions — and find out what’s it’s like to discover you’ve had the virus confirmed . . . or not.
ATINY plaster on my right arm and a €225 hole in my bank account are the tell-tale signs I have tried a new antibody test to see if Covid-19 can be blamed for the nasty cough and banging headache I had before lockdown even started.
In early March, I thought I had flu and, with my temperature hovering above normal, I climbed under the duvet for three days.
In the long weeks since, with Ireland paralysed by the pandemic, I developed a nagging worry that my sudden illness was down to the virus which has transformed how we live and — tragically — how many die.
So I set out to find the truth and booked an appointment with a doctor at a private clinic. The test scours the human body for antibodies released by the immune system as you fight coronavirus, and can tell, with near certainty, whether you have had the disease in the past.
I went online to book my test one evening after a simple Google search of ‘Covid-19 antibody check’. Early the next morning I got a phone call from a pleasant-sounding woman at the clinic I had chosen. She checked my name and address, gave me a 1pm slot that day and took my €225 payment.
Soon, I was in my mask and heading off to the clinic, where they took a phial of my blood and sent it for testing at a laboratory. ‘We will send you the result by email later today,’ the doctor told me.
Frankly, it was a relief to get it done. For I suspected the virus might have struck others close to me, too.
A fortnight before I took to my bed, my partner, Nigel, had been rushed to hospital, suffering from a mystery infection.
He has cancer, is undergoing chemotherapy, and his immune system has been shot to pieces.
Despite all manner of tests, the doctors could not discover what bug was ravaging Nigel’s increasingly thin body. He had a fever, searing stomach pains, and was so ill that for 24 hours he barely knew he was in hospital.
Was it sepsis he had picked up? A bad reaction to chemo? Or was it coronavirus? None of the doctors knew. Nigel was not tested for Covid-19 (it was early days), and when the mystery infection cropped up again last week — meaning he is back in hospital — he had no clue if he’d had the virus and, if so, whether it had come back.
I turned to a doctor pal for advice. She came up with a cunning plan. ‘If you have the antibody test and find out you had coronavirus when you were ill in March, then the chances are Nigel had it in hospital and then passed it to you,’ she suggested.
So, as the family guinea pig, I walked into the clinic. The doctor there said my test would, after lab analysis, very accurately show if I had been hit by Covid-19.
Three-and-a-half hours later, I received an email from the clinic saying I was in the clear.
And that means, almost certainly, that Nigel did not have the virus, either, when he ended up in hospital the first time. I am sure I am not the only one rushing to have the test. Even if you test positive, it does not guarantee immunity from the disease. The makers of the tests — Abbott Laboratories in the US and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche — make that clear. But these tests give us a glimmer of hope. They will help scientists get a ‘bigger picture’ of Covid19’s lethal antics. Research into the test results will be able to discover the level of antibodies which develop in the body of a Covid-19 survivor. Scientists will get to know where the virus has been: in what parts of the country, and where it hit hardest: in hospitals, care homes or in the community. All this is vital and may lead to a vaccine against the virus.
For if a person does become immune (by catching the disease itself or being vaccinated against it), they can return to normal life without fear of getting infected and passing it to someone else.
In Ireland, we are set to follow other countries who have introduced these tests as we begin antibody testing from the start of next month.
According to reports, around 5,000 people will be asked to volunteer for antibody tests as part of a study to try and determine if popele have already had the virus but with no symptoms or mild symptoms.
‘Where they are of use is in trying to ascertain what proportion of the population has been affected but did not have symptoms or had very mild symptoms, says Dr Cillian de Gascun, Director of the National Virus
Reference Laboratory (NVRL) says.
The tests are already being rolled out in Britain in the hope of instilling confidence in people to return to work. But a more sober view came from infectious disease expert Professor Eleanor Riley at the University of Edinburgh.
She told Sky News: ‘An antibody test tells me that those symptoms I had a few weeks ago were due to coronavirus. It doesn’t tell me that I am immune to re-infection’.
As for myself, the email I received from the clinic stated clearly that antibodies were ‘not detected’ in my blood.
Now I know that my illness in March was not Covid-19. And Nigel, my partner, may have had an infection but it is unlikely to have been caused by the virus.
This means that we are still terrified of going out and catching the disease. And we are likely to be for some time yet . . .