Breakthrough coronavirus test can quickly tell you the strength of your immunity

[Chris Smith]

• A novel coronavirus antibody test kit can provide faster results than existing ones, and it can measure the strength of the immune response to COVID-19 or coronavirus vaccination.
• The cPass test looks for neutralizing antibodies, which are the proteins that can bind to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and render it useless. The virus won’t be able to infect cells and multiply inside them.
• The test is already undergoing review with the US Food and Drug Administration and has been approved for use in the European Union and Singapore.

How long does COVID-19 immunity last once you survive the illness or receive a vaccine? That’s the critical answer the world needs to better handle the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. What we know so far is that the immune system can repel the virus and that reinfection is unlikely in the first weeks and months following the primary infection. Researchers think the immunity to the novel coronavirus can’t be better than the resistance to the other human coronaviruses that cause common colds. If accurate, that means we might get COVID-19 again after up to a year after the first bout. Also, if immunity is short-lived, then we’ll need to be vaccinated regularly to keep staying protected.

Recent research also showed that the antibodies might disappear from the blood within two to three months of infection. We’d still be protected, as the immune response is more complicated than that. White blood cells, called T cells, would be able to engage the virus and help produce new antibodies in the future. But if tests can’t detect antibodies after three months, officials looking to track the disease and measure herd immunity will not get accurate results from current tests. This is where a breakthrough coronavirus test comes into play, as it’s been specifically designed to return quick results on a certain type of antibody that actually measures the strength of your immune response to COVID-19.

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Breakthrough coronavirus test can quickly tell you the strength of your immunity originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 24 Jul 2020 at 20:45:17 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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