On February 28, the team of Ye Feng, PI director of the respiratory tract virus and infection study group of SKRLD published online a research paper with the title of “Development and Clinical Application of A Rapid IgM-IgG Combined Antibody Test for SARS-CoV-2 Infection Diagnosis” in the Journal of Medical Virology (IF: 2.049). The paper describes for the first time the research and development of SARS-CoV-2 IgM-IgG detection kit, and its application in the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19.

Discoveries of the paper are summarized as follows.

1.It has successfully developed SARS-CoV-2 IgM-IgG fast detection kit based on lateral immunochromatography technology. The detection kit can give results in about 15 minutes, which has greatly shortened the detection time (it takes 3-4 hours for nucleic acid RT-PCR detection to give the results)

2.It has been proven by the clinical specimen test and evaluation of multiple centers that the sensitivity of the detection kit in clinical detection is as high as 88.66%, with a detection specificity of 90.63%. The sensitivity of IgM-IgG antibody detection is much higher than that of IgM or IgG single antibody detection (with a sensitivity of 94.83% vs 1.72% and 3.45%).

3.By comparing the detection results of the antibody detection kit with the fingertip blood and venous blood, it’s found that the results of the two are basically consistent.

The successful development of COVID-19 antibody detection kit that is convenient (detected with blood drop), fast (giving results in 15 minutes), safe (non-direct contact with respiratory tract virus), and highly sensitive (IgM-IgG antibody) can enhance the clinical diagnosis rate as a supplementary detection for patients confirmed negative in nucleic acid test, and can also be used as a means of fast screening and unleash its advantages of screening in the periods of personnel flow and concentration over large areas such as nationwide resumption of work, production and schools.