Sanquin will use one million blood tests to investigate immunity to the coronavirus. The ongoing investigation is being expanded considerably, the blood bank reports. Together with the Ministry of Health, the organization has received one million tests from China.
These are blood tests that show the presence of antibodies against the coronavirus. Those tests are extra valuable because, according to Sanquin, they measure three different types of antibodies. All three antibodies play a slightly different role in the immune system.
“We have a million tests that we can use to conduct all kinds of investigations,” said Feike Sijbesma, the cabinet’s special coronation envoy. Among other things, it can be investigated how the disease moves through the population and through age groups.
Sijbesma: “What you cannot do with the tests is purely at an individual level to see who can participate in the work process and who cannot. Because probably 95 percent of the Netherlands has not yet gone through the disease and has no antibodies.”
Phase-out lockdown
The extra tests are in addition to Sanquin’s research into group immunity in the Netherlands, according to Minister of Health, De Jonge. “But it is also necessary for all kinds of experimental treatments to be able to do this type of test,” he says.
Antibody testing shows how covid-19 spreads in the Netherlands. The results of the research play a role in the elimination of the ‘intelligent lockdown’.
7000 donors
For research into group immunity, the tests will soon be applied to some 7,000 donors. The blood bank wants to use the blood of immune donors for the production of antibody preparations. They must protect vulnerable people against Covid-19.
The donors themselves will not hear the results unless they have a lot of antibodies in their blood. Then they are asked to donate extra.
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