Parang nagtapon ng pera! Janette Garin wary of COVID-19 antibody tests

By Billy Begas

Former Health Secretary and now Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin urged the public not to trust antibody tests to determine an individual’s protection against COVID-19.

Garin said antibody testing is an unnecessary expense for the public as it sows confusion.

“If a test kit has a false positive / negative of 40-60%, don’t trust that. Trust your vaccine,” Garin said. “Nakakabahala na yung kaliwa’t kanan na antibody testing na nangyayari sa buong bansa.”

Garin explained that while a positive antibody test result can be used to help identify people who may have had a prior COVID-19 infection, these tests have not been evaluated to assess the level of protection provided by vaccination.

She identified two major complications that can arise from the improper and mishandled antibody testing:

– Those who will turn out positive will think they cannot get infected, which is not true because immunity generated from a natural infection is short-lived (mostly 3 months) and most asymptomatic patients do not develop effective antibodies

– Those who will turn out negative will doubt their vaccine-induced immunity and will send wrong messages to others increasing vaccine hesitancy

She explained that antibody tests are used to detect people who have resolving or past COVID19 infection, heck communities/ population with high risk of COVID transmission; and for clinical research and trials.

Garin said the protection being generated after full vaccination is what has been shown by clinical trials to be effective – that is why, two weeks after recovery, COVID survivors are still encouraged to be vaccinated.

The major focus of vaccine development is preventing the binding of the virus into human cells thru ACE receptors. Protection generated from full vaccination is because of specific antibodies/immunity blocking the process of viral entry into the human cells.

“Kung hindi makapasok si COVID19, there will be no viral replication and subsequent infection. Current antibody tests have different targets but none of them have been evaluated to assess protection generated from vaccination,” she added.

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Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)