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Jul 2021

How does the Covid antibody test work? How accurate is it?

Posted By Suborna Fermi Posted on Jul 07, 2021

The name of Covid-19 is not unknown anymore to any single person on the planet. The aggressive rampage of this deadly respiratory disease has already claimed a gigantic number of lives in several regions of the planet. The most concerning fact is, the disease is well known for turning fatal in most of the cases. This can be considered as the major reason why the greater percentage of common people all over the world has already made a wise decision of taking precautionary measures as much as possible every time they are stepping out of their home.

However, the necessity of a Covid antibody test is literally undeniable in a word. An antibody test can be considered as a type of screening for the antibodies present in your blood. These antibodies are generally prepared by the natural immune system of our body to fight infections and diseases. In other words, when any flu or virus affects your body, or you get any vaccine shot in the body, our immune system instantly starts to prepare these antibodies and the antibodies start to fight the intruders.

A brief on Covid antibody test

Knowingly, there are two specific kinds of antibodies,

  • IgG antibodies: These antibodies are generally seen at the earlier stages of any infection.
  • IgM antibodies: these types of antibodies are generally known for showing up later.

Greater percentage of people usually have the IgG antibodies within 14 days after the symptoms of the infection start to get visible. However, these antibodies remain in your blood even after the infection is gone.

Most of the pathology labs have already enabled the facility of this test. It is always suggested to go for a Covid antibody test, even if you have got your vaccination done. The basic purpose of this test is to determine the presence of antibodies in your blood, which will help the medical experts know whether you had been infected at any point of time in the past or not. The test process is simple. A medical expert will be fetching a little amount of blood from your vein and carry it to the pathology lab. The expert pathologists will be running the test on the collected blood sample. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t really take too long to get the test result generated. However, as all of us are still not aware of the name of this test, there are still a huge number of people who are not aware of the difference between an antibody test and diagnostic test. It is always necessary to have sound knowledge about both of these.

Difference between Covid antibody test and diagnostic tests

As per information fetched and verified, the purpose of both of these tests are totally different from each other. A Covid diagnostic test will be helping you know whether you are currently having the deadly infection in your body or not. On the other hand, an antibody test is performed to make sure that the person had been infected at any point of time in the past or not. To be mentioned once again, Covid antibody tests do not help to determine the current presence of the virus in a person’s body.

How accurate is a Covid antibody test?

As a matter of fact, there are two specific kinds of antibody tests and both of these tests can help to determine the presence of antibodies in a person. In case of a laboratory test, a medical expert collects the blood sample from your vein and gets it at the pathology lab to examine the sample in a proper manner. However, many people are also found relying on a rapid point care test, in which finger prick blood is used, which can be taken at your home too.

It has always been a prime question of so many that how accurate is a covid antibody test. It has been seen in a study that IgG and IgM antibodies are having low sensitivity. As a matter of fact, the accuracy may vary. A test report also shows that even if 5% of a total population gets infected, then 28% who may get positive test reports have actually never been infected. That is how exactly the accuracy may vary in some specific cases.

However, it is always suggested to go for a corona antibody test as many of us can be asymptomatic without having any idea about the fact that we have been infected before or not. There was a time when antibody testing used to help the medical experts identify people who are having antibodies that helped many other people fetch the benefits of plasma therapy. Nowadays, antibody tests are also done after a vaccination to know that the vaccinated person is growing antibodies against the virus or not. You may get in touch with a genuine medical expert today to fetch more necessary information in this regard.