Starting Friday morning, thousands of North Texans will be able to take COVID-19 antibody tests and get results in less than 20 minutes.
“The antibodies test is a finger prick test that you can draw a little bit of blood,” Sneha Patel with Metroplex Medical Centres said. “Usually within 15 minutes, we will get a negative/positive for each of the antibodies.”
About 1,400 people have appointments in Fort Worth, Plano and Dallas and hundreds of tests are being reserved for first responders.
“What that means is it can let us know if you have had the virus or currently have the virus,” Patel said. “People who maybe thought that they had it several weeks ago – that’s the ideal candidate.”
There are many people in the region who had mild symptoms but could not get tested because most tests were reserved for people with severe symptoms or who had high risk factors.
Many were told to home-isolate for 14 days and treat symptoms leaving some to now wonder if they had a COVID-19 infection and have now recovered.
These tests along with regular testing could be the first steps to getting back to normal and saving lives.
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“As Dr. [Anthony] Fauci was saying, it’s not one versus the other. It’s using them together to get the data and the information that we need so that we can donate plasma and save people who are in the ICU,” Patel said. “We can get people back to work – especially first responders and people who are working currently to make sure we know who is safe to be out in public and who is not.”
Metroplex Medical Centres is no longer taking appointments for this round of testing, has ordered more tests.
