Coronavirus outbreak

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marinyork

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Wales allows exercise more than once a day, with some libraries, gardening centres and recycling centres to re-open.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52584690

Note that this article is likely to change with more details added by the time others respond.

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marinyork

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
ONS thinks 20,000 people are getting infected per day with between 130,000 and 396,000 currently having the virus. This is higher than a previous estimate given.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/uk-coronavirus-cases-400000-experts-a4435631.html

Preliminary results. Apparently not published yet, but widely referred to. For those antibody sceptics, the first tranche also apparently/hopefully includes an antibody test that's been sent off to labs so this might be the first time a vaguely true number of how many people have had the virus in the UK is come up with (it's generally believed 10% or more of London's had it - it's likely to be a lot lower in some other areas).
 
B

bitsandbobs

Über Member
McWobble said:
It looks like antibody testing is of limited use.

IgM is only detectable 7 days after symptoms develop. For IgG, this is 10 days. Antibody testing will thus miss presymptomatic cases and those in the early stages of the disease - which is probably also when they're at their most infectious. These are the people you most need to track down and isolate. Additionally, people still shed virus even after symptoms subside, so IgM / IgG is not a reliable marker of when someone is no longer infectious.

At the moment, the only test we have that will serve both purposes is PCR, for all its dismal false negative rate. We need a more reliable, easier and quicker test than PCR, especially for contact tracing. Sadly, I don't think that antibody testing will pass muster: the adaptive immune system just takes too long to make the immunoglobin. Do you know of anything on the horizon?
Click to expand...

As has already been pointed out, antibody tests are not intended as a frontline diagnostic. PCR is used for that.

There is another potential diagnostic approach - antigen testing - where viral surface proteins are detected instead of viral nucleic acids (which is what PCR does). In theory, it should be possible to test more people using antigen testing than PCR as it is very fast and less reliant on access to a lab.

Unfortunately, there are a number of challenges in getting antigen testing to work for a respiratory disease such as SARS-CoV-2, so there may not be an antigen test any time soon.

Having said that, there are some companies that claim they have one - for example, E25Bio in the US.
 
Rusty Nails

Rusty Nails

We remember
Location
Living in the slow lane
LCpl Boiled Egg said:
Easy come, easy go, will you let me mow?
Bismillah! No, we will not let you mow. (Let him mow!)
Click to expand...

"Now he can't ride his bicycle"

Sorry, probably needs a thread in the cafe.
 
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