Coronavirus antibody testing expands in Kalamazoo but health officials say it has low utility’ – mlive.com

July 28, 2020

KALAMAZOO, MI -- A forensic lab in Kalamazoo can produce 2,000 coronavirus antibody tests in four hours, but they are waiting for interest from the community to get rolling.

Meanwhile, Kalamazoo County health officials do not see the immediate value in widespread antibody testing.

Antibody testing can identify if a person was exposed to a virus like COVID-19, but it is not considered a diagnostic test. This is because antibody testing is not yet advanced enough to determine the length or strength of immunity granted from antibodies, Kalamazoo County epidemiologist Mary Franks said.

Related: Latest on coronavirus antibodies and immunity: What we know and what we dont at this point

For that reason, Franks said she sees antibody testing for individuals as something to do out of curiosity rather than making behavioral decisions in relation to immunity from the virus.

At the local public health department, it doesnt inform our practice, she said. That data wont help inform our practice and make for evidence based decisions, so I see it as having kind of a low utility.

Forensic Fluids lab director Bridget Lorenz Lemberg believes that widespread antibody testing will give a fuller picture of who has been exposed to the coronavirus.

Forensic Fluids, a drug testing facility in Kalamazoo, can use its equipment and expertise to identify two antibodies that indicate when someone would be contagious and if they could be immune to the virus.

The lab reached out to local hospitals and first responders for volunteers to be tested but did not find any participants in the Kalamazoo area, Lorenz Lemberg said.

The lab was able to test a fire department in the Lansing area. One paramedics test results in particular piqued their interest, Lorenz Lemberg said.

The departments sole paramedic has likely been transporting coronavirus patients since January, Lorenz Lemberg said. Although the paramedic never showed symptoms of the virus and never had a positive result from a nasal swab, his antibodies showed that he had been exposed.

If the demand for antibody testing increased, Lorenz Lemberg said the lab could add a second shift and double the number of tests they could do in a day. Forensic Fluids boasts a turnaround time of 24 hours, she said.

We can give the state capacity to test people, she said. At four to six thousand [tests], if we had more than one shift, we could make a dent in the population of Kalamazoo County.

Both Franks and Kalamazoo County Medical Director William Nettleton agree that antibody testing will be informative for future studies on a larger population scale. But, they stress antibody testing cannot replace the diagnostic testing that happens through a nasal swab.

Decisions about going back to work, for example, should not hinge on an antibody test, Nettleton said.

Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine is developing antibody testing in collaboration with Kalamazoo-based company, IONTOX, according to a news release.

The medical schools associate dean for research, Greg Vanden Heuvel, said it appears around 5% of the population has been infected with the virus, including people who are asymptomatic, according to a WMed press release.

Researchers believe antibody testing could answer the question of whether there is a difference in the rate of transmission in a populous area like New York or Detroit and a more rural area like Southwest Michigan.

Theres a lot of talk about how different the response to being infected with the virus is, Vanden Heuvel said in a statement. Some people get really sick and wind up on a ventilator and other people never get sick at all. The question remains, how many people have been infected with this virus? That is up in the air.

The medical school worked with Bronson Methodist Hospital to obtain serum from patients who had been hospitalized with COVID-19. That serum was used to develop the antibody test.

As of Monday, July 27, Bronson Methodist Hospital was currently treating nine COVID-19 patients. In total, the downtown hospital reports 139 recovered patients.

The hospital currently has capacity to run several hundred tests per day, Bronson Healthcare communication specialist Carolyn Wyllie said. However, the demand has been much lower at an average of 20 tests per day being ordered.

From May to July, approximately 800 antibody test were administered at Bronson Methodist Hospital. Bronsons new downtown laboratory will perform antibody testing as well, according to a press release.

The state data hub has also started recording both diagnostic and serology test results. Serology tests include antibody tests and enzyme tests.

As of Sunday, July 26, Michigan recorded only 10.92% of the 1,901,252 tests recorded were serology tests.

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