Deputy health minister: Ukraine may launch mass COVID-19 antibody testing

Ukraine could become the fifth country with a mass COVID-19 antibody testing program, the country’s chief sanitary doctor, Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko, said on April 23.

These tests estimate whether a person has had the virus and developed immunity to it.

However, Ukraine does not yet have strong scientific data on how long this immunity will last, the chief sanitary doctor said during an appearance on the “Right to Power” TV talk show.

According to previous data, people with COVID-19 antibodies have developed immunity that can resist the virus for three months.

Currently, Ukraine uses polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to diagnose the coronavirus.

They are highly sensitive, but they cannot be used all the time because of the virus’ incubation period, Lyashko said. If a swab from the patient’s mouth or nose is taken during the first three days of COVID-19’s incubation period, the PCR test is uninformative, the chief sanitary doctor said.

“To detect the presence of immunity to the coronavirus disease, one needs to use the ELISA-method,” Lyashko said, using an acronym for “enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay,” a common biochemical analytical procedure.

He added that, in Ukraine, these methods are currently being tested. The country needs specific ELISA tests to measure the level of immunity to the novel coronavirus.

The antibody test kits will be supplied to Ukraine by German and American manufacturers. Ukrainian laboratories are ready to carry out over a million antibody tests a day, Lyashko said.

On April 15, Lyashko revealed that antibody testing is one of Ukraine’s options to lift the quarantine.

However, the deputy health minister did not specify when these tests will be available to the public and who should be tested for COVID-19 antibodies.

How ELISA tests work

Unlike PCR tests, which look for the presence of the coronavirus directly, so-called serological tests, like ELISA, look for antibodies in the blood.

Antibody tests reveal who has already been exposed to the virus and developed immunity to it.

This system of IgG antibody detection is suitable for large-scale studies that could show the true scope of the pandemic.

Although fast, cheap and easy to manufacture, antibody tests raise many questions among experts and scientists.

Lack of evidence

On April 17, the World Health Organization announced that there is no evidence that antibody tests can show whether a person has immunity or is no longer at risk of becoming reinfected.

“Nobody is sure whether someone with antibodies is fully protected against having the disease or being exposed again,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO, has said.

Ukrainian doctors and experts also express doubts about the usefulness of antibody tests.

Alla Mironenko, professor and head of the Viral Infections Department at the Gromashevsky Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases, has said that rapid tests, which also test for antibodies, are currently not helpful.

“Such tests are absolutely useless in the situation we have… Rapid tests start working on the tenth day or even later,” she said.

Ukrainian infectious disease doctor Viktor Tretiakov told the Kyiv Post that there is no strong evidence that the antibody detection procedure is “scientifically sound and economically viable in Ukraine.”

Ihor Kuzin, acting head of Ukraine’s Center for Public Health, said that the country has neither accepted nor ruled out the use of rapid testing in its national strategy.

Nevertheless, despite the unreliability of antibody tests, numerous health experts who spoke to the Kyiv Post said that both PCR and rapid screenings have their places in the national strategy. Mass express testing can be useful for measuring the spread of the virus among the population, by examining the antibodies of people who have already had it. This can help track progression of the virus, transmission dynamics, as well as the status of recovered people.

Some countries, including Germany and the U.S., are relying on rapid tests as their governments prepare to open up their economies and get people back to work.

On April 23, the UK and the Lombardy region of Italy announced that they also had started antibody test studies to understand levels of immunity.

Still, scientists have warned that the presence of antibodies to COVID-19 does not guarantee immunity.

Moreover, recent WHO findings suggest that no more than 2% to 3% of the population has the antibodies to show they were infected by the coronavirus. This may undermine countries’ plans to create “immunity passports” that will help people return to normal life.