Coronavirus: NHS staff will be first to get new antibody test, medical chief promises

Frontline workers, including NHS staff, will be the first to get a new test showing whether they have had coronavirus, one of England’s deputy chief medical officers has said.

The government is in talks with Swiss drugmaker Roche to buy its Covid-19 antibody test, which Public Health England (PHE) has backed after experts at Porton Down science laboratories approved it.

The test, which Boris Johnson has previously called a “game-changer”, detects whether somebody has had coronavirus. Roche says it is 100 per cent effective in picking up those who have had the virus, even in people who experienced no symptoms.

Experts believe those who have had Covid-19 develop a degree of immunity, and if it can be shown people were definitely immune to catching coronavirus a second time, they could safely go back to work without fear of catching or spreading the virus.

So the government has faced enormous pressure to find a reliable antibody test. In theory, widespread testing would allow the lockdown to be ended for those in the clear.

A different batch of tests ordered by the government in mid-March was deemed too unreliable to be used.

Deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam said it was clear that people who had Covid-19 generated an antibody response, but it would take time to understand whether in all cases people developed immunity and whether any immune response offered lifelong protection or just a few years.

The test would be “incredibly important” in the weeks and months ahead, he said, adding: “I anticipate that it will be rapidly rolled out in the days and weeks to come – as soon as it is practical.

“I also anticipate that the focus will be on the National Health Service and on carers in the first instance.”

The test, already given preliminary approval by the EU and the US, involves taking a small sample of blood and testing it for antibodies that appear after exposure to coronavirus.

No 10 said the new test would “certainly” be available on the NHS, but commercial discussions with Roche were continuing.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said the idea of an “immunity certificate” was also still under consideration if science showed that people developed immunity.

Prof John Newton, of PHE and coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing programme, said the test was a “very positive development” and was very reliable.

“We were confident that good-quality antibody tests would become available when they were needed,” he said.

Porton Down experts, who carried out an independent evaluation of the test, concluded it was 100 per cent accurate. “This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear.”

Roche said it could supply hundreds of thousands of the tests each week. The tests, which use automated equipment, have “specificity” of more than 99.8 per cent – meaning they do not give false healthy readings.

The company says it has already started shipping the new antibody test to leading laboratories globally and has pledged to ramp up production to high double-digit millions every month.

The pharmaceutical firm said it would prioritise tests for distribution via the NHS before looking at how they may be sold to individuals.

Health minister Edward Argar stressed that the public could not yet get their hands on the test.

Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Susannah Fleming, from the University of Oxford, said people could be “pretty confident in both positive and negative” results from the test but said around 4 per cent (one in 25) of positive tests could potentially be inaccurate.

Similar antibody tests have also been developed by companies including US-based Abbott Laboratories and Italy’s DiaSorin. Abbott and Germany’s Siemens Healthineers have separately laid out plans to produce 20 million tests or more each month for the global market from next month.

Abbott said its antibody test has been successfully evaluated by public health bodies for England, Scotland and Wales as having specificity results of between 99.73 per cent and 100 per cent. The company, which said it was working closely with the NHS, has started shipping tests to NHS laboratories, with the capacity to provide 5 million tests to the UK each month.