?????? ?????? ???????? ???? ???????? ?????????? ??????????-???? ??????????…

It has almost been 300 miserable days since the first case of Corona-virus was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The outbreak has not only been worst from the health point of view but also the people are suffering through financial and social conditions. The virus has not hit any part of a region, country, or world, but it is a global catastrophe!

To reduce down the level of impact of this catastrophe, the only way we all have right now is to ‘STOP THE SPREAD’. If any person abides by the global norms set up to counter this virus, the possibilities of viral spreading will reduce down. The following are some important precautions as disclosed by Indian MOHFW.

But you might wonder, why the number of Coronavirus cases is increasing? Surely, there is a possibility that some of us don’t follow the precautions. But according to many reputed sources, the major reason behind this sudden rise due to people’s ignorance.

This sentence may express a bitter feeling. But it is well said by William Shakespeare that- there is no darkness but ignorance. 

Now, you might be wondering whether how this ignorance is responsible for such a catastrophe?

Ignorance is nothing but having a lack of information related to anything and just being over-confident or unserious about the issue. There are a lot of many real-life examples related to the ignorance of people.

The Corona-virus doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t discriminate—it targets everyone who isn’t taking the necessary precautions, being unserious, and isn’t being safe.

And so, by being serious and optimistic about the situation, do follow necessary precautions and at the same time keep an eye over medical information uncovered by relevant authorities. 

Most of the people are well aware of the basic information of the virus and the symptoms if anybody acquires the infection. But the people don’t know, what exact steps to be taken if at all somebody acquires the viral infection. 

So, are you well aware of the COVID-19 tests? 

Do you know, under which condition, which test is to be undergone? 

Are you well informed about the accuracy and results of the tests?

If not, then this article is specially dedicated to you. Also, don’t worry, as this article won’t include much higher medical terms and will try to give you a crystal-clear idea of COVID-19 tests.

Let’s start by knowing more about the virus first.

Corona-virus, its symptoms and other details:

People are well acquainted with this virus about its medical information through various resources and media. Now to tell you in layman terms, this virus is a type of common virus that infects humans, typically leading to an upper respiratory infection (URI). As it is an upper respiratory infection, some parts which can have a threat from this virus are the nose, nasal cavity, mouth, and throat.

And, that’s the reason why we all are supposed to wear masks, wherein it can act as a protective layer, obstructing the virus from entering the upper respiratory parts. Seven different types of human coronavirus have been identified. Most people will be infected with at least one type of coronavirus in their lifetime. The viruses are spread through the air by coughing and sneezing, close personal contact, touching an object or surface contaminated with the virus, and rarely, by fecal contamination.  

Examples of human corona viruses that have been reported to cause severe symptoms to include the MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and the new 2019 Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak that began in Wuhan, China.

The following are some major symptoms identified till now due to the infection of the virus:-

Now talking about the time duration of the viral infections, there are many factors like severity, treatment in action, or cure, which differentiates the short-term infections and a long term one. Generally, the long-term infections in the case of COVID-19 are really painful, and for which the virus detection is a really necessary step to be executed.

It is a very simple relation that you can only know about the infection if the virus has entered your body or not. So, it’s wise to undergo certain tests for detection of the virus.

COVID-19 tests:

There are basically two main categories of the test in the fight against COVID-19 tests viz. diagnostic tests and antibody tests. 

A diagnostic test can tell a person whether he/ she is suffering through the infection or not. For instance, this kind of test prevalent in India at present is a real-time reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR). Also, there is another diagnostic type test known as the antigen test. 

Another category of the test is about the antibody test, also known as the Serology test. The name itself reflects that antibodies play a significant role in this kind of test. But before knowing more about it, what exactly is an antibody? Whenever the body is infected, our body produces virus-fighting elements known as antibodies. In short, these antibodies help our immune system fight off the infection. 

Now, an antibody test simply includes inspecting the blood samples of a person and checking for the history of infection & production of antibodies into it. So, if the blood sample contains antibodies, then the person could previously be infected through the virus.

In a nutshell, these tests (will discuss more it further) are crucial to guiding our next steps in the fight against COVID-19.

At the moment, let’s have a look at different COVID-19 tests, their exact medical procedure, and relevant details.

rRT-PCR Test:

The real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test is the most commonly used one for COVID-19. So, talking about the concept of this test in a simple manner, if we cut down the name of the test into a different segment, it tells us all about the process. Refer to the flow of segmentation.

As humans beings have DNA as a genetic material that passes on information from one generation to next. Similarly, the COVID-19 virus has RNA as its genetic material. The common difference between DNA and RNA is DNA consists of two strands while RNA has just one strand. 

The RNA strand of the virus is surrounded by other proteins that are responsible for the infection. And these proteins contained genes when entering the host body start their functioning and replicate the virus inside the human body. For this, the COVID-19 test called is used so as to detect this viral gene inside the human body. 

But there is no enough viral RNA to detect the virus directly into the patient’s sample. And here the step 1 of reverse transcription is initiated. The virus RNA is converted to cDNA with the help of an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. Now, thereafter this DNA is supposed to be repeatedly amplified in order to create enough copies for the virus to be detected and it is usually done through step 2 i.e. Polymerase Chain Reaction. There are various cycles of PCR step so as to produce up to a billion DNA copies of virus RNA for easy detection. Finally, a fluorescent probe allows an amount of target DNA to be detected in real-time and is quantified in each cycle of PCR. As per the amount of fluorescence per cycle, a certain range is put up that differentiates between a positive detection and a negative detection, and thus the final step finishes. 

Now, the following are the medical steps executed by the concerned authority under this kind of testing- 

You may also refer this short video for more in-depth information about this rRT-PCR test.

Now. Let’s move on towards antigen testing.

Rapid antigen testing:

These tests are designed to detect a specific protein in the virus that enters the body’s immune response. In the case of COVID-19, it is the ‘spike protein’ present on the surface of the coronavirus that facilitates its entry into the human cell. For this test, professional collect a swab/ specimen, generally a nasal swab.

After this, the swab is immersed in a solution that deactivates the virus. A few drops of this solution are then put on a test strip. This has to be done within an hour of the immersion of the swab in the solution.

The test strips contain artificial antibodies designed to bind to coronavirus proteins. If a person is infected with coronavirus, the test lines will appear on the paper strips within 15 minutes. Since this test doesn’t include any amplification step as of rRT-PCR, this a rapid type test. Following is a diagrammatic representation of the test procedure-

So, this was about the two diagnostic tests that are used at present. Now, let’s discuss about the antibody testing.

Antibody tests:

This kind of test is generally known to some people. As the name suggests, it detects whether a person has antibodies to the virus. It is a serological test, meaning that this kind of test is a blood test that looks for antibodies in your blood. It focuses on proteins made by your immune system.

For the antibody test, trained professionals collect a few drops of blood. The sample is placed on a cassette or cartridge that contains the SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

If the blood samples contain antibodies, they will immediately bind to the viral proteins. The positive result is indicated in the form of lines, like a home pregnancy test.

Antibody tests can be of different types. One of the tests, known as Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), which is designed specifically for screening large numbers of specimens at a time, is suitable for detecting the spread of the disease in a large population within a short period.

Following is an image representing the medical procedure of this test.

From the description of this test, it can be inferred that the medical procedure for antibody test and Rapid antigen test is almost same. The basic difference between both is the antigen test looks for the current infection while antibody test look for Immunoglobin G and M antibodies.

But one might wonder, which tests are better? Or to be specific, which test should a person undergo for virus detection?

So, for this, let’s make do a small comparative study between the three.

Comparative study:

To summarize, every test has its pros and cons. It’s finally upon the different factors and also upon us, people. In the present day, India is lagging in the infrastructure of some tests in various regions. So, the availability of the infrastructure and the labs can be one such factor to prioritize the tests to be undergone. 

But, why to undergo the tests if you can prevent the infection? As suggested in the introduction of this article that if one follows all the norms and precautions, he/ she can counter the situation. After all, Precaution is always better than cure.

Now to add on in the case of COVID-19 tests, the antibody test can not only help the person who is infected but also some other patients.

But how is this possible? And this is all due to the production of antibodies.

As it is discussed above the antibody test helps a person to detect whether the antibodies are produced in the body or not. 

And with the recent trend of asymptomatic infection, this can be used to check the presence of virus inside the body, by helping the infected person. Also, this test determines the person’s eligibility to donate plasma after recovery. If the person is eligible, their plasma can be transfused into patients that are still combating the virus. This process of plasma transfusion is Convalescent plasma therapy. 

This process grants the patient some passive immunity. And as the vaccines for the COVID-19 virus are under trials; this therapy can help a few infected people to recover.

But with cases increasing daily, the medical authorities are in a really big hustle every day. Also, whenever a person’s relative gets infected, the person gets into a panic and becomes indecisive. It’s natural.  

So, what can we as a responsible public do? How can we tackle such panic and tough situations?

Not to worry. Because ?????????? ?????????? provides an online platform for plasma donation and donee can connect with the community of donors. With the outbreak of severe COVID-19 Pandemic, Bloom India has made a provision for plasma donation. It is allowing citizens to pledge as a donor, be it #organ or blood or plasma donation. Thus, Bloom India is spreading the motto #?????????? ?? ???????????? and #?????????? ??????????, ?????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? ??????????.

So, if you are willing to pledge for plasma donation or you know someone who can help with this, do pledge at this page of Bloom India.

Besides plasma donation, it is a platform wherein you can pledge for blood and organ donation. Currently, Bloom India has a network of donors across India and especially from Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad registered on our platform. Bloom India has taken this initiative and urges every citizen to join hands with it for this noble cause. Interested donors can register themselves at the Bloom India platform as donors by providing their details.

Once someone pledges to be a donor, Bloom India provides the donor a Privilege Card. This Privilege Card can be redeemed at nearby Pharmacies, diagnostics centers, Satvik Restaurants, online or offline stores, and thus the donor can avail discount on his/her purchase.

In a nutshell, Bloom India is on a mission to increase a national network with humanitarian interests. So, ‘???? ????????????’ at this platform because every single #donor and every single life matters!!

References:

•  https://www.icmr.gov.in/pdf/covid/strategy/Advisory_for_rapid_antigen_test14062020.pdf
•  https://www.icmr.gov.in/pdf/covid/strategy/Advisory_Antibody_Testing_04042020.pdf
•  https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/diagnostic-testing-for-sars-cov-2
•  https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/antigen-detection-in-the-diagnosis-of-sars-cov-2infection-using-rapid-immunoassays
•  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/expert-answers/covid-antibody-tests/faq-20484429
•  https://geneticeducation.co.in/real-time-pcr-principle-procedure-advantages-limitations-and-applications/