Well, we're very excited to be one of the first institutions
to have the antibody test available for our patient population.
One of the most powerful uses of the test is to look at what
the prevalence of COVID 19 is in our entire community.
And there definitely are people who have been asymptomatic
or very mildly symptomatic who will test positive
for having had COVID 19 from a population point of view.
We think it is a very valuable to test broad swaths
of of the population to see what the prevalence is.
But does an antibody response equate
to immunity to the virus?
That's not so clear.
We know that
it's an important part
of the immune response, but it is not the whole immune response.
A positive test will clearly tell you that you have been exposed
and had COVID 19, but it will not tell you whether or not
you could possibly be infected again in the future.
And so we want to explain this to patients so that when they when and if they
receive a positive serology result they understand that they should not
stop using
all of the protective measures that we're asking everyone to use.
Now, if you look at other coronaviruses, this isn't the only human coronavirus.
If you look at other coronaviruses,
antibodies tend to be produced rapidly.
And they tend to be present
for several years and then wane.
And immunity tends to wane for coronaviruses.
Whether or not that will be true for COVID 19, there just hasn't been enough time
to tell with the precious resources that we have to distribute
over an entire community facing a pandemic.
It really is helpful if everyone can get out there
and get their flu shot this year.
All of the social distancing that we're doing, masking, etc.
We're going to hope that that is also going to decrease our
our rates of influenza in the community.
But by all means, everything that we can do to
prevent flu
is going to help us in our fight against COVID 19.
Okay.
It says your value is a reactive interpretation is reactive
positive results, maybe due to past or present infection.
So that means I am positive
I knew it.
I think about February 11th or 12th, I got really, really sick.
I had really high fever for like five, six days straight.
I was extremely tired.
I could not pick myself up off the couch.
And I'm the kind of person that I'm a trooper and I work through any cold.
I'm usually up and about but I could not move.
I hadn't even heard of coronavirus at the time.
I had no idea.
I in fact, the news started coming out in late February.
I visited my dad about eight or nine days later
after I was no longer symptomatic and
I did have a dry cough at the time.
So maybe two close to two weeks later,
he was sick and he went to the hospital
and he got extremely sick and intubated and almost died.
When my dad got tested and he was positive for COVID,
I had a suspicion it was me because he's kind of a hermit.
He doesn't go out too often.
And so I don't think that he had a lot of places of exposure.
I mean, he could have gotten it from the grocery store
or he has family members that live with him.
There are out and about.
So it's possible he could have gotten it elsewhere.
But I was visiting him and helping him
with his tech support
and I had that dry cough.
So it's quite possible that I give it to him in the whole household.
I think knowing lets me take a little bit
more mitigated risk though, though I know that it doesn't mean immunity.
It means that if I'm positive
and my husband happens to be negative, it means that I would rather
do some of the things where I'm a little more exposed.
So I think that helps me a little bit.
Not without taking all precautions,
wearing my mask, being careful, doing the social distancing