nCoV: Serological detection of past SARS-CoV-2 infection by non-invasive sampling for field epidemiology and quantitative antibody detection

保护易感人群不受新型冠状病毒输入的主要方法是对入境的有感染风险的人员进行隔离。如果一个人有胸部感染的症状，可以通过对病毒的特定测试来诊断或排除冠状病毒。限制是，有些人可能没有任何症状，没有进行测试，实际上有些人可能在进行测试时已经感染并从病毒中恢复过来。目前，我们没有特定的血清学方法来检测过去的SARS-CoV-2感染，这可能对确定意外感染风险很重要。在实践中，这一关键缺陷可能意味着病毒感染的持续传播可能仍未被发现。这一工作方案将开发诊断测试方法，通过从口腔抽取液体取样并检测抗体，可以很容易地取得样本。另一个好处是，这可以筛选从感染中恢复过来的潜在献血者，他们的血液中含有高水平的抗体，这可能适用于在没有公认的有效抗病毒药物的情况下治疗严重疾病的患者。

The principal method protecting susceptible populations from the importation of the novel Chinese coronavirus is to quarantine individuals at risk of the infection when they enter the country. If a person has symptoms of a chest infection it may be possible to diagnose or exclude coronavirus by a specific test for the virus. The limitation is that some people may have no symptoms and not be tested and indeed some may have been infected and recovered from the virus by the time of this testing. At present we have no specific serological method of detecting past infection with SARS-CoV-2 which may be important in defining unexpected infection risks. In practice this crucial lack can mean that ongoing transmission of virus infection may remain undetected. This programme of work will develop diagnostic tests a way in which samples can easily be taken by sampling fluid from the mouth and tested for antibody. An additional advantage is that this can allow screening of potential donors recovered from infection whose blood contain high levels of antibody which may be appropriate for treating patients with severe disease at a time that there are no recognised effective antiviral agents for patients.