I feel like people don’t take COVID-19 seriously until they’ve been tested and are proven to be infected. So having tests for the public can help slow the curve and people might actually stay the freak at home. But also, tests are necessary for identifying which patients are infected and which have something else that is treatable.
Currently, according to Medical News Today, there are two different types of tests to determine COVID-19 infection and exposure: molecular and serological. The molecular test involves taking a respiratory sample from the back of the throat to test for an active infection. The sample is put through a Polymerase Chain Reaction process that looks for signs of viral genetic information. These are the tests most people have undergone when they say they “tested positive” or “tested negative” for COVID-19. However, a drawback of this test is that it can only determine active infections, it can not determine if someone had the virus at one point and has now recovered. In order to determine that, we need to administer the serological test to look for antibodies. Antibodies are microscopic offensive substances our bodies produce to neutralize invaders, ie. the rona. If someone has antibodies specific to COVID-19 it means they have been exposed to, are an asymptomatic carrier for, or have an active infection of COVID-19. Antibodies are super important for the immune response and future responses to the same disease. Vaccines work by eliciting an immune response within our bodies that produce antibodies, then when we are exposed to the vaccine in the environment the antibodies are already present and know what to do.
As your body responds to a pathogen, your antibodies become better at fighting it in a process called affinity maturation. They may switch from a class IgM titer to a class IgG as they get more and more specific, as stated in a New York Times article. If someone undergoes the serological test and it determines that they have only IgM antibody titers, this means they have been infected with the pathogen for five days or less. After five days of a primary response your antibodies class switch and begin making IgG antibodies. You will have both IgM and IgG in your blood until the pathogen is no longer a threat. Once your body has fought off the infection you will primarily only have IgG titers in your blood, a sign that you are capable of eliciting a quicker secondary response if the pathogen is encountered again. This is very beneficial because when exposed the second time, your body will fight it off so quick you wouldn’t even know u were infected. Ya got immunity. Take that COVID-19.
If we could determine who was IgG positive to a certain degree, we would know who has been exposed to the virus, recovered, and is now immune. Having enough IgG titers would keep COVID-19 from establishing a productive infection and keep people from being contagious. If we can determine who is now immune we could start sending people back to work and businesses could reopen! I could actually get to celebrate my birthday properly!
microBIOLOGY 