TAMPA, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis says the state is ramping up testing for COVID-19 antibodies with the first big shipment of tests set to arrive by May 1.
During a press conference Monday at Tampa General Hospital, DeSantis said one of the keys to reopening Florida and getting people back to work and school is determining who has already been exposed to the virus, especially if they never showed symptoms.
“I think it’s important to know in communities throughout Florida the prevalence of antibodies,” he said.
But of the more than 160 antibody tests flooding the market right now, the Food and Drug Administration has approved just seven.
The FDA relaxed rules for the approval process allowing companies to sell tests that have not been fully vetted under the so-called Emergency Use Authorization program.
Dr. Juan Dumois, an infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg says having a slew of unregulated tests could lead to unreliable and inaccurate results.
“We have to assume that every single brand of antibody test is different,” Dumois said. “If that accuracy has not been well-established yet … that lack of information needs to go into the equations of what we do in response to those test results.”
Dumois suggests the best way to determine accuracy is to test a large pool of people known to have had COVID-19.
Unlike testing for the virus itself, it’s unclear if the state has issued guidelines to ensure uniform collecting and reporting of antibody tests. The Florida Department of Health did not respond to our questions.
Private labs like ARCpoint Labs in Tampa are already offering antibody testing. The demand, says owner Khyati Patel, “is crazy right now,” averaging about 50 tests a day for the past two weeks.
“The phone doesn’t want to stop ringing,” Patel said laughing.
Patel says her lab began offering an instant finger-prick test—not approved by the FDA—but those supplies ran out within a week. They now offer a more expensive blood draw test that runs about 200 dollars and takes two days for results.
“They just want to have a peace of mind,” Patel said of the people seeking the test.
“They want to be able to volunteer to help other people and probably donate the plasma.”
However, even if tests are accurate there’s no guarantee of immunity, according to the World Health Organization.
In a brief last week, W.H.O. warned it was not yet clear if having COVID-19 antibodies protected someone from getting it again.
"For some infections, antibodies only provide mediocre protection against getting that infection again,” Dumois said. “For other infections, antibodies help provide great protection.”
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