CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It's a new weapon against the coronavirus outbreak — antibody tests help identify Americans who unknowingly had COVID-19 and then recovered.
The blood test detects antibodies.
StarMed Family and Urgent Care in west Charlotte allows you to sign up online to drive up, get your finger pricked, and get your test results in five minutes.
"There's none like this in Charlotte right now," StarMed Chief Medical Officer Arin Piramzadian said.
Piramzadian started to worry when he realized it was hard to get a nose or throat swap test.
"With the swab test, there's a very limited supply of those, they're very closely controlled by the health department and CDC", Piramzadian said. "There's just not enough."
Piramzadian says he has around 2,000 rapid blood tests coming in from a private lab called Pharmatec.
"It tests for IGG and IGM — that lets you know if there’s a current infection or if you've been infected in the past," Piramzadian said.
The goal of the antibody testing is to flatten the curve and get a better understanding of who's been infected.
"There's about 15 to 20% of the population that actually is positive and they are asymptomatic which means they have no symptoms," he said. "So we want to make sure those patients are being tested we want to make sure they're not walking around exposing others."
The FDA says antibody testing should not be the sole basis to diagnose or exclude SARS-CoV-2 infection or to inform infection status.
"We can test people to see if they've been exposed, immune, and go back to work and a combination of that kind of test with the current kind of test we have now is how America opens back up again," said Admiral Brett Giroir, U.S. Public Health Service.
But testing isn't always successful. The UK ordered 4 million antibody test kits and found them to be unreliable.
Most researchers say it's unlikely you'll get the virus again once you have the antibodies, though they still need hard science to prove that.
"That is the eventual hope, we just don't know enough about it, we're hoping yes that it does not reinfect, once you get it that's it," Piramzadian said.
You have to go online to get seen by one of StarMed staff, they discuss testing, then you set up an appointment time to get tested.
"So even if you do have a positive result showing that you were positive in the past, that does not give you a free pass to walk around," Piramzadian said.
Piramzadian encourages social distancing and hopes this test provides some peace of mind to Charlotte residents.
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