VIRGINIA (WAVY) — The Virginia Department of Health wants to test 5,000 people across the state for coronavirus antibodies as soon as possible as part of its new Serology Project.
“It’s testing for the presence of antibodies in the bloodstream of people and so if you clearly have antibodies to COVID-19 in your bloodstream, that means you’ve had it,” said Dr. John Brush, medical director of Sentara’s COVID-19 Research Task Force.
To do that testing in Hampton Roads, the VDH is enlisting the help of Sentara, which will facilitate testing locally.
“The more information you have about the disease you’re dealing with, the stronger you are at fighting the disease,” said Brush. “Having an idea of how far, how widespread this disease has been in Virginia compared to other states, for example, compared to other localities, will be very helpful.”
The goal of the project is to see how far the virus has spread across the commonwealth.
“If we can test a whole bunch of people and see whether they had antibodies in their bloodstream, we would be able to figure out how many people across the state have actually had the disease,” Brush said.
Sentara is not actively recruiting people to come in specifically for this antibody testing. Instead, they will ask people who are coming to Sentara facilities to have blood drawn for reasons unrelated to COVID-19 to participate.
Brush says the results of this project can help as the state carefully reopens.
“We want to avoid having a surge in this disease that will overwhelm our hospitals and our health systems,” said Brush. “The more we know about this illness, the better off we are.”
Sentara will test 1,000 people in roughly the next 33 days. The VDH hopes to have results from the entire project by the end of July.
