It’s a test of stuff such as blood antibodies. When your body is fighting with certain infection like COVID-19, it makes these. The same thing happens when you take a vaccine like a flu shot. This is the way you build your immunity towards a virus. It’s called a serology exam as well.
The test for antimicrobial disease does not test the virus itself. It sees whether your immune system has responded to the infection.
How an Antibody Test Work?
A technician takes some finger pricks of your blood. This test looks for one or more types of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, which is the main cause of COVID-19.
- IgM antibodies, that happens early in an infection.
- IgG antibodies that are most likely to show up later.
After the symptoms start, many of the people have IgG antibodies after 14 days. They stay in your blood for longer even if the infection goes away; however we can’t say for how long will that be during Coronavirus.
What’s the basic Difference between an Antibody Test and Coronavirus Test?
A coronavirus test is sometimes known as diagnostic test as it look for symptoms of active virus. It is much simpler and faster than the antibody test. However, it only detects only if you have the virus in your body at the moment when you are tested.
An antibody test can also show that you had the virus in the past at some point of time. It could have been gone or you could still be contagious to the virus.
Why there is a need to have Antibody Testing?
You could be having COVID-19 and not know this. Not everyone who is suffering from this virus has symptoms. The experts are of view that antibodies may keep health officials aware of how common the virus is.
When the scientists will have a knowledge that has had the virus, they can easily find out how sick it makes many of the people. They may also study that what will happen if people who’ve had it come into contact with this again. Along with some other scientific research, this can also assist the researchers to know who could be immune to the virus.
How Can You Get an Antibody Test?
These tests cannot be done at home; however, they are becoming widely available in many areas. The decisions related to testing are made by local external icon or state health departments or the healthcare providers.
These antibodies tests for COVID-19 are available through the laboratories and healthcare providers. You may talk to your healthcare provider to see if they provide antibody tests and either you must get it done or not.
What does the result mean, if you test positive?
- If you result positive, it means that you could have antibodies from an infection with a virus that lead to COVID-19. But there are some chances that the positive result could mean you have antibodies from an infection with a distinct virus from the similar family of viruses that is Coronavirus.
- You must talk to the healthcare provider about the positive test result, they may provide you another type of antibody test to notice if the first one was accurate.
- You must continue to protect others and yourself as you could get again infected. You must wear a PPE kit when you are at the workplace.
- You could also be tested positive even if you don’t have any symptoms of COVID-19 and this is called an asymptomatic infection.
