The National Infection Service director at Public Health England, Professor Sharon Peacock, announced during the Science and Technology Committee that home-testing kits for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are almost ready for distribution to the UK population. He said that 3.5 million kits have already been purchased with millions more to be ordered in the coming days. All these tests will be available for free or at a minimal cost to help determine who has and hasn’t yet been infected by COVID-19.
The UK’s goal is to be processing 25,000 antigen tests daily by April 25. This would allow for faster diagnosis of a broader range of patients. At the moment, supplies dwindle, and medical facilities have to be careful to allocate tests only to those who need them most.
There are two types of testing kits for the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen. One is for antigens, and it informs whether or not a patient has active disease. It involves a nasal swab analysis to check those suspected of having the coronavirus disease. The other test looks for specific antibodies – ones that indicate an immune response has already taken place against the disease. However, to administer the antibody test, the patient has to wait until symptoms have subsided for at least a week.
The antibodies test takes about a day for test results to come back – varying on how long it takes to transport the sample. However, there is a new one in the works that is said to take only 15 minutes. The antigens test takes a day (to several days) too, but there’s also a new one of that one which takes only 45 minutes.
Professor Peacock said at the conference:
We are developing a home test kit so that people who have been sick can be tested for the presence of antibodies. If that test is positive, they can then go out and go back to work. A small number of tests have arrived for evaluation and these are in Oxford at the moment. They will be evaluated rapidly…
The home testing kit works much like a blood sugar monitor by using a prick of blood to analyze a patient’s blood. This test will likely be available in pharmacies such as Boots and Amazon. They will assist with the finger-pricking and interpreting the results. The pharmacies will also be delivering these kits to those at home actively self-isolating due to symptoms or infected family members.
Peacock noted that the tests still have to undergo a final round of testing before they are cleared for distribution:
This testing of the test is a small matter and I anticipate that it will be done by the end of this week. I think that I would be somewhat less categorical about the date, [but it would be a matter of days rather than a matter of months].
To watch the full Q&A with Professor Sharon Peacock, click here and skip to 13.01.19.
