Panaji, Mar 13 : With the ongoing vaccination programme and emerging variants of Covid-19, quantitative antibody testing needs to be used to provide insights on immune status after vaccination, according to Dr Naresh Purohit, Advisor-National Immunisation Programme.

Speaking to UNI, the noted Epidemiologist and Principal Investigators of clinical vaccine trial, said the use of antibody testing kits to measure the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine and further doses was important.

He said,’With the ongoing pandemic, it was a logical step to conduct antibody tests. This can only make reporting robust and help analyse variation levels. They can also prove beneficial if conducted before administering a vaccine as it can help clinicians know the starting levels of antibodies a person has and it can assist in evaluating any change in antibody levels that the vaccine induces, especially the development of antibodies directed against the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein. People should be tested for Covid-19 antibodies before and after receiving the vaccine to avoid antigenic overload given they have survived the infection without displaying any symptoms.”

Dr Purohit averred that antibody testing in patients, who have immunodeficiency and require an evaluation of the immunity levels post vaccination, can be significantly useful.

He said antibody testing kits can be useful for research purposes that can indicate the efficacy of the vaccines.(UNI)