Background:COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense loss of lives, enormous devastation and has affected lives global- ly. Timely diagnosis is necessary to contain its spread. While it is important to test symptomatic individuals and high -risk contacts through reliable and confirmatory test (NAAT) to find out the positive cases of COVID -19, it is also vital to check their immunity status through serological tests to find out the varied immunological response in the affected popula- tion.
Methods:All NAAT confirmed COVID-19 patients were included in the study. With a repeat respiratory sample for NAAT, simultaneous serum sample was taken for detection of IgM and IgG antibodies. Data was compiled and analyzed statis- tically.
Results:During the first repeat NAAT, 71.43% had mounted an antibody response, whereas, 28.57% had no response. Irrespective of the antibody status, 68.57% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus in NAAT. Though the number dwindled on second repeat NAAT, it raised important questions regarding humoral response and its clinical and diagnostic applicability.
Conclusions:Not all COVID-19 patients mount a humoral re- sponse due to yet unexplained factors. Also, exclusive depend- ence on serology assays will miss diagnosis in these patients. More research is needed for description and applicability of humoral response in COVID-19 patients.