052 - Everything You Need to Know About Antibody Testing for COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Immunologist Dr. Gigi Gronvall of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security talks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about a new report outlining the potential and pitfalls of antibody testing. They discuss how long it might be before we understand more about antibodies and immunity to COVID-19 and how widespread testing could help capture the true footprint of the coronavirus's spread.
Learn more: jhsph.edu/covid-19
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.7 | Our focus is the novel coronavirus. |
| 0:15.2 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department. |
| 0:21.6 | Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's |
| 0:26.9 | news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow. |
| 0:30.5 | If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:36.3 | That's public health question at jh.h. That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast |
| 0:41.3 | episodes. |
| 0:43.1 | Today, I'm speaking to Dr. Gigi Grunval, senior scholar |
| 0:47.3 | at the Center for Health Security at the Johns |
| 0:49.6 | Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:52.5 | She is an immunologist and the lead author of a new report |
| 0:57.0 | from the center about antibody testing. Let's listen. Dr. Grenwald, thank you so much for |
| 1:05.0 | joining me. You are an immunologist and you've just written this report about antibody testing through the Center for Health |
| 1:12.1 | Security at Johns Hopkins. Can you just start by telling me what an antibody is? |
| 1:17.8 | Sure. So an antibody is part of your response to an infection. And when you, if you were to get |
| 1:25.8 | infected by a virus, part of your immune response is to develop |
| 1:29.4 | antibodies. And so hopefully you are able, that's part of the way that you're able to fight |
| 1:35.4 | the virus of. |
| 1:37.9 | So anybody testing, what is it measuring actually? |
| 1:42.4 | It's measuring your response to the illness. |
| 1:47.6 | So it's not measuring the virus itself. |
... |
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