As part of his daily press briefings, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on March 28 evening announced that the state would start condu...
As part of his daily press briefings, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on March 28 evening announced that the state would start conducting rapid antibody tests on suspected Covid-19 patients.
The next morning, he reiterated this on Twitter. “Blood samples of those under observation will be collected to detect possible community transmission,” he said.
Rapid Testing | #COVID19 Response @WHO has stressed the importance of testing in the fight against the pandemic. Kerala has decided to pursue a rapid testing for COVID-19. Blood samples of those under observation will be collected to detect possible community transmission.
— Pinarayi Vijayan (@vijayanpinarayi) March 29, 2020
So far, India has used the RT-PCR or reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test on nasal or throat swab samples of suspected patients to test for Covid-19. The RT-PCR tests look for the presence of the virus in the DNA. They can take anywhere between 12-24 hours to show results.
In comparison, the rapid antibody tests identify disease-fighting antibodies in blood samples and can deliver results in 45 minutes to two hours. However, since antibodies are usually detectable only after around 7-10 days of being infected by the virus, such tests could throw up false negatives – an infected person may appear normal in the blood test.
To avoid such false...
