Ichor Blood Services is proud to announce that we are expanding our COVID-19 antibody testing to further cities due to high demand for this particular service.
Ichor Blood Services Expands COVID-19 Antibody Testing Amid High Demand
Due to the high demand Ichor Blood Services has been seeing for its COVID-19 antibody collection service, we have announced that we will be immediately expanding our operations to include the cities of Fort McMurray, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, and Lethbridge. These new service locations will join Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto as part of our area of operations as we continue to gauge interest in other locales to see if expanding our COVID-19 antibody testing service further is required to meet market demand.
"What is interesting so far is that more than 30% of our positive antibody test results in Alberta have come from asymptomatic patients," says Mike Kuzmickas, Ichor Blood Services Founder and CEO. "This means the number of active COVID-19 cases is likely higher than currently known. Antibody testing can provide a significant and important source of data to help our health care leaders plan for the future."
After launching Ichor Blood Services in January solely focused on providing lab collection services for general lab work, prenatal screenings, and STI testing, we found ourselves uniquely positioned to help Canadians determine if they possessed the antibodies for COVID-19 once the pandemic struck, given the lack of governmental testing at the provincial or federal levels. With still no word on when Canadians can expect widespread antibody testing from their governments, we have seen sharp demand for our lab collection service as it pertains to COVID-19 antibody testing. This has led to the expansion of our areas of operation as it relates to this service offering.
Our laboratory testing partner, StageZero Life Sciences, has developed an extremely accurate COVID-19 antibody test which features industry leading specificity. If a test result comes back negative, the negative result is reported with 99 per cent certainty. If a test result is positive, a confirmatory test is then conducted. If that confirmatory test is also positive, it validates the presence of antibodies with a Positive Predictive Value of 99 per cent.
While there is still so much unknown about the novel coronavirus which has changed life as we know it, preliminary research indicates that those who have the antibodies for the disease are likely protected or immune from reinfection, at least for a short period of time. Antibody testing is also a tool that can be used to further study the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 within a given population, allowing us to see how widespread the virus is.
With research of the novel coronavirus and the widespread implications it presents still in its infancy, definitives are hard to come by. But one thing Ichor Blood Services knows is that Canadians are curious about whether they've come in contact with the virus and now have the antibodies for it. We're happy we can help them find out.
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Ichor Blood Services is offering corporate or large group bookings and travel testing for COVID-19 antibody or active PCR test collection. For more information about our COVID-19 collection services, please give us a call at 1-844-424-6728 or fill out our contact form.
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