Moscow Mayor's Office Announced A Program Of Mass Testing For Antibodies To Coronavirus

Moscow Mayor's Office announced a program of mass testing for antibodies to coronavirus

According to the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, testing will become available to citizens in 30 clinics in the capital this week. Subsequently, it is planned to do up to 200 thousand tests per day.

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Testing by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) allows you to detect the presence or absence of IgM (a marker of the presence of coronavirus infection) and IgG (a marker of immunity to coronavirus infection) in the patient's blood.

“This week we are already moving on to the practical implementation of this program (testing by the ELISA method). Already this week, our 30 polyclinics will begin sampling from Muscovites for screening tests. Up to 70 thousand Muscovites will receive weekly invitations to come to the polyclinic and take ELISA tests for the disease. Thus, we will conduct screening studies on a large scale, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, detect morbidity at an early stage,”said Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin during a videoconference meeting with the COVID-19 Clinical Committee.

According to the head of the city, testing is intended for employees of city enterprises, including medical institutions, organizations of the housing and communal complex, law enforcement agencies, transport companies.

Mass ELISA testing will also develop in the Moscow region, where a similar epidemiological situation is observed.

“I talked about this with the Governor of the Moscow Region in order to jointly start developing testing with ELISA tests and the residents of the Moscow Region directly with the help of the Ministry of Health of the Moscow Region. We are already launching this whole complex this week. For the previous two weeks we have been experimenting, setting up the equipment. Of course, this process will be constantly improved, but it is necessary to start practical work,”Sobyanin said.