A new coronavirus test to possibly see if a person is immune to the highly contagious disease is being rolled out at a Massachusetts lab on Monday — testing that will likely be key in fighting the spread of the virus.
Boston Heart Diagnostics, based in Framingham, will initially launch a coronavirus antibody test for area hospitals, where the need is the highest ahead of an anticipated surge in the coming weeks.
“Given what we’re going through right now, this needs to first go to the people on the front lines in the hospitals and to the patients they’re taking care of,” said Patrick Noland, president of Boston Heart Diagnostics, who also noted the importance of testing first responders on the front lines.
“Our role right now is to provide this information very quickly to the healthcare systems,” he said. “We need these people to be healthy, and to take care of the rest of us.”
The blood-based antibody test will eventually be offered more broadly to people as capacity increases. Over time, the antibody testing can help experts understand how much of the population has been infected with the coronavirus.
The testing may help identify people who were exposed to COVID-19, and who may have developed some level of immunity but potentially had mild to no symptoms at the time.
Boston Heart Diagnostics is a subsidiary of Eurofins’ U.S. Clinical Diagnostics — a network that will initially run nearly 5,000 tests per day, or 200 results every hour.
“Hospitals around the region will be able to get their specimens quickly to our Framingham lab, and we can provide the information very quickly to them,” Noland said. “It will be really valuable to our local healthcare systems as they have a couple tough weeks coming up.”
These hospitals include those in Boston, across New England and even in New York, which has been the hardest hit state and biggest coronavirus hotspot so far.
“New York has a very difficult situation, so it’s important to help them out as much as possible,” Noland said. “The way this is developing, it’s critical to put as much capacity as we can into the system.”
Testing is recommended at least 14 days after potential exposure, giving the body the time it likely needs to build an immune response and produce antibodies.
But infectious disease specialists continue to have questions about immunity after contracting the coronavirus.
“Clinicians are still trying to determine to what degree are you immune, and for how long are you immune even if you build up antibodies,” Noland said. “It will be studied extensively as we get further into this.”
