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Most tests to determine if a person has already been infected with COVID-19 check for the presence of antibodies, but a new study in Italy has found that these tests are much less accurate than a new type that looks for a type of immune cell called a T cell. Researchers in the United States, Britain and Italy have logged blood tests on 70 people in Vo, Italy, who had been infected with the novel coronavirus in the past two months. With antibody testing, 16 people tested negative, a false negative rate of 23 percent; with T cells, there were only two false negatives, a rate of 3 percent, reports CNN.
The researchers also studied 2,200 people who had tested negative for COVID-19, and only 45 of them were infected with the T cell test. Dr. Lance Baldo, co-author of the unpublished study, said that many of those 45 people likely had COVID-19 at some point, but did not realize it. The company carrying out the test in question, Adaptive Biotechnologies, plans to seek FDA emergency use authorization for a commercial view of its test in late November.
The body’s immune response to a virus like COVID-19 is “like a military operation, where you have different components,” former FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach told CNN. “The navy lands on the shore, the air force attacks from above, the army arrives with artillery. … When something tries to invade us, the fight that our body launches is extremely sophisticated and complicated. The source of the antibodies dies within a few months, but T cells are known to stay in the body for years.
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