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Northwell Health antibody testing
Northwell Health intends to test many of its 70,000 employees for COVID-19 antibodies.
MANHASSETT, N.Y. - Antibody testing is now underway at Northwell Health's research lab to take a closer look at how many of its more than 70,000 employees have had novel coronavirus and may be immune to it now.
"It's actually our own sort of time machine where you can look back in time and see if someone had COVID-19 infection, developed antibodies but maybe didn't have access to testing or they were asymptomatic and never sought testing," said Dr. Dwayne Breining, the executive director of Northwell Health Labs.
The lab has been processing upwards of 1,000 COVID-19 tests each day. Officials will continue validating antibody tests in the coming weeks and plan to incorporate it once it becomes widely available.
"We probably have about 20 different machines in this laboratory that are capable of doing testing for the COVID-19 antibodies," Breining said.
On Monday, New York began conducting its own testing survey in order to help reopen and rebuild the state. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that a sample of 3,000 New Yorkers will be tested for the presence of antibodies produced by people infected with COVID-19.
While testing the entire state would be more precise, officials say this is an effective way to look at how many people were infected.
"If you do an appropriately randomized sample of the population you can use a fairly small number of people getting a test sample to then extrapolate those results to the general population and have a pretty good idea of what the percentage would be," Breining said.
Experts say the more you test the more you learn. However there are still a lot of unanswered questions, such as once infected can people test positive again? And how long do the antibodies last?
"In general, people who have antibodies to a viral infection will have what's called temporary or seasonal immunity to catching that disease again," Breining said.
A solution is developing a vaccine sooner than later one that officials say will help combat further spread.