UPMC to administer coronavirus antibody tests to all patients

UPMC officials announced Thursday all patients treated within the health system will soon start receiving a covid-19 antibody test.

The test will identify whether a patient’s body has produced antibodies in response to covid-19 and could help determine whether a person is immune to the virus.

Antibodies are blood proteins the body produces to fight foreign substances such as viruses.

“We are building our capacity to not only test but to have the most reliable test that answers, ‘Were you exposed and are you immune?’ ” said Dr. Donald Yealy, chair of UPMC’s department of emergency medicine.

Yealy said the test could be about two to four weeks from completion.

There are dozens of antibody tests available on the market, but only eight so far have been approved by the FDA for emergency use.

“Some are much more reliable than others, and many are not much better than flipping a coin,” Yealy said. “Our UPMC clinical laboratory team is assessing all the available testing options, including our own developed test and those of other commercial partners.”

UPMC is already using an antibody test to screen potential donors who could be eligible to donate blood plasma, which is being used to attempt to treat the coronavirus.

That test does not determine whether a person is immune to the disease, but the presence of those antibodies could signal that the body has mounted a response to the virus.

The health system announced last week it would begin testing all patients, even those who are asymptomatic, for an active covid-19 infection.

Those tests, which determine whether a person is infected with and carrying the virus, will start with all patients requiring hospitalization for surgery and other invasive procedures. It will later be rolled out to include patients in UPMC’s outpatient centers and emergency departments.

The health system started testing patients as it restarted surgeries and other procedures that had been put on hold during the pandemic.

UPMC surgeries were down 70% compared to the period before the pandemic.

The first 10% of that drop has returned in the past week, and the health system expects most of those patients to return over the next month, Yealy said.

Of the 500 asymptomatic patients tested so far throughout the system, only one has tested positive, said Dr. Rachel Sackrowitz, UPMC ICU service center chief medical officer.

Expanding testing for the virus and antibodies will provide better data to allow policymakers and public health officials to make more accurate estimates about how many people have had the virus and determine the mortality rate, Yealy said.

To date, UPMC said it has discharged 234 covid-19 patients from across the health system. The health system’s telemedicine visits jumped from 250 per day in early March to nearly 9,500 visits per day last week, Sackrowitz said.

UPMC oversees 14 nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities.

“We’ve not had a single patient in those that fall directly under UPMC test positive for covid-19,” Yealy said, adding that elderly patients who were treated for covid-19 in the hospital system make up a large number of the people who have died from the coronavirus.