Dr Kon says he'll test for antibodies, and then adds what we've been waiting to hear for a long time

Photo: Tanjug/Serbian government/Slobodan Miljevic

Epidemiologist Predrag Kon, a member of the Crisis HQ for the fight against coronavirus, said that he would also be tested to check for antibodies against COVID-19, and at the same time announced what we have been waiting to hear for a long time - that we are objectively no longer in the epidemic. But he also recalled that there is a procedure to officially declare it is over.

Recommended

He told RTS that Elisa testing will also be done at the City Institute for Public Health in Belgrade, although they have not yet received a letter regardiding the equipment itself and the bank account, and explained what the results will mean.

"I will probably get tested too, although I'm in no hurry, because I didn't have any health problems. These are fast tests, for IgG and IgM antibodies. The smartest recommendation is for anyone who has a (positive) finding to have it interpreted by one of three kinds of specialists - an infectologist, an immunologist or a virologist. We have a virologist at the City Institute. As soon as IgM antibodies are discovered, a PCR test should be performed just in case, which would confirm whether the virus is acute," said Dr. Kon.

He said that it is obvious that a large number of people think that they had coronavirus because that infection occurred immediately after the flu epidemic.

Flu ascribed to coronavirus

"Many people ascribe flu to coronavirus. If someone lives in the belief that they had it, and are afraid, then it's better to know whether or not this is true. Testing during immunity screening is something else, that's a representative sample and those tests are 96 percent more secure, while with these fast tests the accuracy is lower," says Dr. Kon.

Serbia is in the 13th week of the epidemic, and according to him, everyone is waiting for the day without any new cases.

"I don't think that collective immunity is the same in different parts of Serbia, but I don't think it's something very high because we worked a lot on protecting ourselves. The end has already come, we expect cases to appear sporadically, we will see in the next two weeks. We are waiting for that zero to appear. We are no longer in the classic epidemic, but there must be zero infections for 28 days in order to announce that it is over - but objectively we are no longer in the epidemic," said Dr. Kon.

(Telegraf.rs)