1,000 NC patients will get an antibody test to see if they’ve had coronavirus
Wake Forest Baptist Health will begin a year-long random sample of 1,000 of its patients looking for coronavirus antibodies, an attempt to get a sense of how widespread the virus is and was in North Carolina.
The health system is working with Atrium Health as well as Oracle, Scanwell Health and Javara.
“Our work will help fill a data gap that has existed since the start of the pandemic,” Dr. John Sanders said in a statement. Sanders is leading the study with Dr. David Herrington at Wake Forest Baptist.
Scanwell Health, based in Los Angeles, is producing the tests and began sending them to the patients Monday, Sanders said in a phone interview. The 1,000 patients are all volunteers.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved coronavirus antibody tests for research, but not for clinical use. Sanders said that is made clear to the volunteers.
North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature is providing $100,000 from its legislative discretionary fund to Wake Forest University to start the survey. State Sen. Phil Berger has been calling for random sampling for several weeks.
Berger, an Eden Republican, said in a statement that the study “will help us learn if the true situation is better or worse than the models project. Nobody knows the true hospitalization and fatality rates for this virus, even as the government has ordered a full-scale economic shutdown.”
State Sen. Darren Jackson, a Wake County Democrat, tweeted Monday night that “apparently we have a legislative slush fund that can be used to do whatever the leadership decides it wants to spend the money on.”
North Carolina has more than 4,900 lab-confirmed cases and more than 100 deaths due to coronavirus and COVID-19. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, put a stay-at-home order in effect for April and banned gatherings of more than 10 people. Nonessential businesses are closed and unemployment claims in the state have set records as the nation and state grapple with the global pandemic.
“Some people want us to completely obliterate these restrictions,” Cooper said at a Monday news conference. “It would be a catastrophe. The numbers are very clear that these interventions that we’ve entered: the limits on social gatherings, school being out. limitations on bars and restaurants. Those kinds of things are working.”
Users get a result at home
Scanwell Health was seeking government approval earlier this month for an at-home test which involves pricking your fingertip. That test was developed by Chinese manufacturer Innovita and previously deployed by the Chinese government, according to The Associated Press. It is the same test, the News & Observer confirmed with Scanwell on Monday night.
“The Scanwell rapid serology test is looking for antibodies in the blood. A positive test result means that you were exposed to the virus previously because it takes time for the antibodies to develop,” Scanwell executive Dr. Jack Jeng told NBC News.
Users get a result at home and will not need to interact with health care providers and thus necessitate the use of personal protective equipment. Masks and gowns have been in short supply across the nation. And North Carolina health officials have asked those showing mild symptoms not to get tested, so it is unknown how many people have had the virus. Carriers can also be asymptomatic.
Sanders said Wake Forest Baptist Health has also received several hundred tests from Neoteryx. That test involves sending the blood back to Wake Forest for testing. The goal is to sample 300 people in each of 40 counties — 20 served by Wake Forest Baptist Health and 20 served by Atrium — to build a large enough population.
“That’s our initial blanket,” Sanders said. “We will be extending out into other counties and increasing sampling as we go.”
Wake Forest Baptist’s samples will be statistically representative of the larger population, Sanders said. And it will try to over-sample at-risk populations, including health care workers, minority populations and the elderly.
“Representative sampling data will provide state leaders more critical information we need to move forward reopening our economy and supporting a strong recovery in North Carolina,” House Speaker Tim Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican, said in a news release.
Cellex, which is based in Research Triangle Park, received emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for an antibody test earlier this month.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 6:00 PM.
