JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (WJAC) — Urgent care facilities are now offering coronavirus antibody tests.
iCare locations in Westmont, Ebensburg and Monroeville have started offering the coronavirus antibody test through a blood draw.
“It’s going to tell us if you’ve had any exposure or possible immunity to COVID-19 coronavirus. We don’t know if the antibody infers immunity yet hopefully, we will find that out soon,” said iCare medical doctor, Dr. Mathew Zajdel.
Unlike the coronavirus test, patients do not need to show certain symptoms in order to be tested for coronavirus antibodies. Zajdel says one thing that has made testing difficult is the lack of guidelines from the CDC.
“Generally, we are testing anybody who had COVID-19 like symptoms in the past. Anybody with a possible exposure to covid-19 and any health care worker,” said Zajdel.
Zajdel says iCare locations have tested about 20 to 30 patients in each location since they began offering the antibody test earlier this month. These tests are bringing new insight on the spread of the virus.
“A few interesting things we have found with these antibody tests is that it is more wide-spread than we originally thought,” said Zajdel.
“One thing in our community is that we found cases a lot earlier than we originally thought. We found people who had positive antibodies who had symptoms back in early March and February. So from a statistical perspective it helps,” Zajdel added.
Zajdel says it could take up to three weeks from the time a person has symptoms for antibodies to show up on a test. And for others, they may not have ever shown symptoms or antibodies. He notes there are still a lot of questions about these tests, but soon they will be answered
“One thing we want to stress to people is that just because they have a positive test doesn’t mean they have immunity. At least we don’t know this yet. So, it’s still very important to practice social distancing, wearing face masks, hand washing and the typical recommendations. So that’s one thing we stress to everyone before performing these tests. As far as testing family members if someone is positive, we leave that to the physician’s discretion. That’s something that can be discussed at their visit to determine if family members need to be tested also,” said Zajdel.
Learn more about iCare’s coronavirus antibody testing by visiting it’s website.
ncG1vNJzZmivmpawtcKNnKamZ56axLR7y6iamqRfobykrctmrKuflaPBbq%2FAq5xmm5Wjwaa%2B0malqK9dpLOnsdGipaBlk6S%2FsLrAr6CrraNirq%2FAyJumnbFdqbK0wNI%3D