West Worcestershire MP Harriett Baldwin is championing a local company which has developed a test which will tell you if you have had antibodies after contracting Covid-19.
Harriett Baldwin MP, Jayne Hassell, Simon Mico, Victoria Grocott, Councillor John Smith
The test, which has been developed by Bio-Diagnostics based in Upton-upon-Severn, is now available to the public and will help people to know if they have already been exposed to the disease.
Harriett has shared the details of the test with the Government’s Test and Trace team and has urged them to take a close look at the new product as the company prepares to market it here and abroad.
The MP visited the company with Councillor John Smith, who is Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet member responsible for public health. The pair were given a tour of the company’s laboratories by Bio-Diagnostics managing director Simon Mico and saw the testing in action.
Harriett said: “I’ve been in close touch with the company as it developed this test and I have shared the details with a number of Ministers as we ramp up our country’s testing capability.
“I am keen to champion this locally developed test which could be a real game changer as more people return to offices and our children return to school.
“Simon is clearly very passionate about this opportunity to offer a test which will make life much easier for many people who have had the disease but don’t yet know it.
“The Government is continuously looking at ways to expand our capacity for testing people who may currently have Covid-19, but alongside that I hope it will look closely at products which identify if we have had the disease and may be immune, as we continue our fight against this new virus.”
Simon Mico added: “This is completely different technology to anything else, testing with very high accuracy whilst attaining results in 3 minutes, can really support the efforts we are all making to reduce the pandemic.
“As the antibodies we detect develop after PCR tests cannot be used, we could take a pressure off that system proportionate to the number of people the BioCard positively identified. Being both highly specific and sensitive, we can now attain a much better understanding of who has immunity, even for asymptomatic people.”