Roche Rolls Out Coronavirus Antibody Test

By Maria Armental

Swiss health-care giant Roche Holding AG is rolling out its coronavirus antibody test at more than 20 commercial and hospital lab sites in the U.S., the company said Tuesday.

Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings' LabCorp Diagnostics and other commercial labs will be able to handle more than 2 million tests a week by June, Roche said.

Roche's Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody test, which identifies antibodies made by the body to fight off the virus, received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration this month.

For many diseases antibodies remain in the blood for weeks, months or even years after infection. Antibody tests are performed on a blood sample and are different from the swab tests used to diagnose a current infection.

"Reliable, high-quality antibody testing is essential to help us overcome this pandemic and will play an important role in getting people back to work," Matt Sause, president and chief executive of Roche Diagnostics North America, said in a statement.

Roche said the test has proven 100% accurate at detecting Covid-19 antibodies, and 99.8% accurate at ruling out the presence of those antibodies. In other words, only two in every 1,000 samples lacking the antibodies would produce a "false positive" result.

--Denise Roland contributed to this article.

Write to Maria Armental at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 19, 2020 17:14 ET (21:14 GMT)

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