Uploaded: Sat, Apr 4, 2020, 2:50 pm
Volunteers help Stanford search for COVID-19 clues in blood samples
With antibody testing sites around Santa Clara County, researchers aim to pinpoint true prevalence of coronavirus
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"We need to understand how widespread the disease actually is," Bhattacharya told the Weekly. "To do that, we need to understand how many people are infected. The current test people use to check whether they have the condition – the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test – it just checks whether you currently have the virus in you. It doesn't check whether you had it and recovered. An antibody test does both."
The study, which is led by Eran Bendavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford, is aiming to get results from a representative sample of county's residents. Volunteers filled out surveys and were targeted through Facebook to participate in the study.
The project, which was assembled in a matter of weeks, has been generating great interest from researchers around the world who are eager to learn about the extent of coronavirus infections in the United States. Researchers in other nations are conducting similar studies, and the World Health Organization has launched an initiative called Solidarity II, a coordinated study in which nations around the globe will be gauging antibody levels in their respective populations.
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