Taylor said this test was not for the 'worried well' to find out if they might have had Covid-19 or not. 'We need to be looking at this now, we're about two and a half months post most people starting to get omicron and then we've got all the Auckland people that have had delta and like everything in the health system, they will no doubt fall off the radar unless we really, start targeting this everything we seem to do with this damn response is two months after it should have started.' With 1.6 million cases of Covid-19 since the pandemic began, NZ Institute of Medical Laboratory Science president Terry Taylor said that urgently needed to change. The test is costly at $100 making it out of reach for many people. The antibodies from the virus do not stick around as long as the antibodies from vaccinations, so it is important to get onto things quick. There are two different Covid-19 antibodies that can be detected by a blood test: one is the spike protein which shows if a person is vaccinated and the other, the nucleocapsid test, detects other proteins only found in the virus.īrooks said the nucleocapsid test could be the missing piece for some people experiencing symptoms months after they think they had Covid-19 but without proof. 'If something crops up down the line to do with your health and you know that you definitely did or didn't have Covid it's going to be important for our understanding of managing healthcare in general and to deal with the impacts of this virus.' With one in five people experiencing Long Covid symptoms three months after their infection, Brooks said people needed to take their health into their own hands. Within the first few months of your infection is the best time to go and get an antibody test for prior infection,' University of Auckland senior lecturer and immunologist Anna Brooks said. 'It's that category of people that really will benefit from an antibody test because your body takes a while to generate anybodies, so it's not something that you do instantly. RATs can be temperamental and not everyone who has got Covid-19 returns a positive rapid antigen test.īut if Long Covid symptoms develop down the track, it becomes extremely difficult to get help without a previous positive test to get the ball rolling. One in five people who have had Covid-19 experience symptoms three months on and researchers and lab workers say antibody testing needs urgent funding.

Positive spike protein antibody test