How antibody testing works for coronavirus

SOUTHERN OREGON —  “You get an idea of how many people actually have the disease and didn’t even know it,” said Dr. Jim Shames, Jackson Co. health officer.

The medical community is learning more about the spread of coronavirus every day and antibody testing is proving essential.

“It begins to give us an example of how much penetration a disease might have above and beyond the people you recognize as being sick,” said Dr. Shames.

Dr. Shames says the blood test can look for two kinds of antibodies, IGM and IGG.

“The IGM comes first and generally when that’s positive that means you are actively fighting a specific illness. And then over time the IGM goes away and the IGG comes out.”

Dr. Shames says the question of immunity is a complicated one because it’s still unclear if IGG antibodies provide any protection against COVID-19.

And if it does, we don’t how long that protection will last.

“Having a positive antibody test would imply that you’re protected and maybe that will be true for this disease or maybe it will be true for some people with this disease, we’re not positive yet,” said Dr. Shames.

Sky Lakes Medical Center’s Tom Hottman says the Klamath Falls hospital tested 400 people for IGG antibodies last week.

3 people tested positive, but Hottman won’t disclose if the individuals were aware they had the virus or not.

“We need to get a whole lot more tests to get a whole lot more information. That’s just not enough data to work with right now,” Hottman said.

With the test now available to the community, Hottman believes the results will be a vital resource not just for medical professionals locally but across the country as well.

“[To] understand how prevalent the virus is in our community,” he said. “And the more data we can get, the more information we can mine from that data and the more prepared we can be.”

Sky Lakes Medical Center says it was able to bring antibody testing to the community because of the hospital’s longstanding relationship with the Mayo Clinic Laboratories.

When asked if Jackson County will have antibody testing anytime soon, Dr. Shames says the county already has the ability to do it. However, because of the relative lack of disease in the community, he says we are not using it as a strategy at the moment.

Medical professionals say the antibody test is for people who are not showing symptoms of the virus or for people who have already recovered from it.

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