Wellness | Blood Tests

Was that a bad cold or
Covid-19? And why is it
important to know?

As Covid waves continue to come and go, it’s vital to know if our vaccinations worked effectively and continue to produce antibodies. That’s because our antibody level test results last September, just before the top-up jab drive began to take effect, were showing a concerning 49% of the people we tested overall had antibody levels below the 500AU/ml mark, which we consider low. In fact, close to 20% of people we tested were classed as having no antibody response to Covid-19.
Taking a Covid-antibody blood test a few weeks or even months after you suspect you may have had Covid-19 can help establish if you have really did have the virus recently or not.

New mutations

The recent arrival of the new Omicron sub-variant BA.2 highlights that Covid-19 has not finished mutating yet. The latest data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggest that the BA.2 strain of Omicron may be even more transmissible than the original variant, and in fact it’s already the dominant strain in countries such as Denmark.

With this in mind, it could become very important to know if that illness you had last week or last month was a bad cold, ‘flu, or was actually Covud-19. If you didn’t take a test, assuming it was just a heavy cold, or simply didn’t want the disruption it might bring, it’s not too late to find out if you had Covid-19. Likewise, if you did take an NHS lateral flow test and it came up negative, that doesn’t mean you didn’t have Covid-19. Evidence is increasing that LFTs are less sensitive at detecting Omicron. Some studies have suggested false negatives are more likely because Omicron reaches higher levels in saliva before it does in nasal mucus.

And for some lucky people, Omicron is entirely asymptomatic, they may be entirely unaware they have had Covid-19 recently.
Taking a Covid-antibody blood test a few weeks or even months after you suspect you may have had Covid-19 can help establish if you have really did have the virus recently or not.
Taking a Covid-antibody blood test a few weeks or even months after you suspect you may have had Covid-19 can help establish if you have really did have the virus recently or not.

Building resistance to new strains

That could be important. Why? Because there’s evidence to show that catching a newer strain of Covid, such as Omicron, can help build resistance to other newer strains. For example, recent studies in South Africa, where Omicron first appeared, indicate that the immune response of people infected with Omicron appears to increase protection against the Delta variant more than fourfold.

So far, our current vaccines, such as Pfizer, Astra Zeneca and Moderna, have not been ‘tweaked’ to be as effective with the latest strains of the virus. With every mutation the fast-evolving Covid-19 moves further away from the original. That could mean a new ‘variant of concern’, if one does arrive, might be more resistant to antibodies created by current vaccines, but less resistant to antibodies created by newer strains of the virus, such as B2 or Omicron.

Knowing that you have high levels of antibodies some months after your top up jab is a good indicator that you have had a recent Covid infection, which might well confer higher resistance to new strains of Covid than the jab alone.

If anyone is concerned about their own immune response to the jabs and how well they continue to produce antibodies, our new generation tests are highly accurate, quick and simple to carry out, either in your own home or at a drop-in centre. For more information on our Covid 19 antibody tests see https://www.privatecoronavirustests.com/product/igg-quantitative
Share