UK to Introduce New COVID 19 Antibody Test

United Kingdom has conducted secret human trials for its COVID 19 antibody test and the results have shown 98.6% accuracy for the test. That is why the British Ministers have now decided to distribute millions of such tests free of cost to the citizens.

Highlights

Known as the fingerprick tests, the UK antibody test will be able to tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus. The trials were conducted in June and the accuracy has been found to be pretty good. The test is developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium, a partnership between Oxford University and leading UK Diagnostic Firms.

As of now, the tests that are being carried out to detect COVID 19 involve taking blood samples from people and it takes days to complete the tests. This new test will do away with this problem and already thousands of prototypes of this new test have been developed.

The government is hopeful that the new tests will be available by the end of the year. Mostly, these tests will be free of cost and will be made available online only instead of making them available in supermarkets. The tests will help in understanding the pattern of COVID 19 transmission in the country but whether the antibodies will indicate any kind of immunity from reinfection or transmission is yet to be known.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020