South Cook News

While people who receive a COVID-19 swab test at Roseland Community Hospital have to make an appointment and then wait up to 72 hours to learn the result, a newly approved test is much faster.

A serology test measures the amount of antibodies or proteins present in the blood when the body is responding to a specific infection, like COVID-19, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved one form of the test April 1.

The test can be done at home with a person applying a tiny amount of blood to a strip to see if he or she has developed antibodies that reveal if they have had the virus and if the body has created defenses for it.

“In other words, the test detects the body’s immune response to the infection caused by the virus rather than detecting the virus itself,” the FDA stated. However, it said during the early days of an infection, when the body’s immune response is still building, antibodies may not be detected.

“This limits the test’s effectiveness for diagnosing COVID-19 and why it should not be used as the sole basis to diagnose COVID-19,” the FDA stated.

Still, some believe serology tests are indicating that COVID-19 has already moved through wide swaths of the nation and left many people healthy and, quite possibly, immune from further infection.

According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, there is a growing demand for serology testing “in order to better quantify the number of cases of COVID-19, including those that may be asymptomatic or have recovered.”

These are blood-based tests used to identify if people were exposed to a particular pathogen by examining their immune response.

“In contrast, the RT-PCR tests currently being used globally to diagnose cases of COVID-19 can only indicate the presence of viral material during infection and will not indicate if a person was infected and subsequently recovered,” the center reports. “These tests can give greater detail into the prevalence of a disease in a population by identifying individuals who have developed antibodies to the virus.”

A Roseland phlebotomist told Chicago City Wire that 30 percent to 50 percent of patients tested for the coronavirus have antibodies, far greater than the 10 percent to 20 percent of those tested who have the active virus. That indicates a lot of people have contracted the virus and survived it without even being aware they were infected.

“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore and their bodies built the antibodies,” said Sumaya Owaynat a phlebotomy technician with Roseland.

The hospital is offering free drive-through testing from 9 a.m. to noon and 1-4 p.m. as long as it has enough testing kits. Owaynat estimated between 400-600 people are tested daily.

A recent patient reported he had a swab test performed at the Pilsen Family Health Center Lower West. He said he made an appointment and came in for the test, which took about two minutes. There were three other people at the health facility, he said, so more people could have been tested.

The patient said he was told it would take up to 72 hours to receive the results. He added that he was not offered a test for antibodies to indicate if he already had been infected.

”They didn’t say nothing about any antibody test,” he said.

While the debate continues over when the nation can emerge from shelter-at-home status and commerce can resume, some who favor at least a partial resumption of business point to fatality numbers.

The Illinois Department of Public Health reported that as of Monday afternoon, there had been 105,768 tests administered in the state and 22,025 people have tested positive for COVID-19. Of those 794 died.

Influenza and pneumonia claim lives every year. In 2017 Cook County reported 908 deaths linked to the flu or pneumonia. The toll was 984 in 2018.

So far in 2020, 235 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in Cook County.