'Very promising' options for tests to better measure the spread of COVID-19 in B.C., top doctor says
B.C. is looking at 17 potential serology tests for the novel coronavirus
B.C. is testing some "very promising" serology tests that could help officials get a better picture of how many people have been infected with the novel coronavirus, Dr. Bonnie Henry says.
According to the provincial health officer, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control is currently looking at 17 of these tests, which would determine if people who were not previously identified as COVID-19 patients have developed antibodies to the virus.
"There's a couple that are very promising," Henry said during her daily briefing on Tuesday.
She said there are "hundreds" of potential serology tests for COVID-19, but the quality of those tests varies widely.
"There's both false positives and false negatives," Henry said — either results suggesting someone has had COVID-19 when they have not, or results that say someone hasn't been infected when they have.
Serology testing would allow public health officials to determine how widely the virus has spread throughout the province, which will help with the planning of when and how to relax the restrictions that have been put in place to halt the spread of the disease.
Theoretically, people who have already had COVID-19 are less likely to become infected again — although it's not yet clear if they'll be totally immune to reinfection.
The key to determining the accuracy of any serology test will be trials using patients known to have recovered from COVID-19, Henry said.
"Some of the people who have recovered from COVID-19 are in line to help us validate," she said. "That's happening even this week."
B.C. is developing a number of research protocols that will depend on accurate serology tests, according to Henry.
Those protocols will include a random sampling of people across the province to estimate infection rates, targeted testing to find links between disease clusters in the community, and testing of previously collected blood samples to see if anyone already had antibodies to the coronavirus before the outbreak in B.C.