Chicago City Wire

A phlebotomist working at Roseland Community Hospital said Thursday that 30% to 50% of patients tested for the coronavirus have antibodies while only around 10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus.

Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician, said she tests between 400 and 600 patients on an average day in the parking lot at Roseland Community Hospital. Drive-thru testing is from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. each day. However, the hospital has a limited number of tests they can give per day.  

Owaynat said the number of patients coming through the testing center who appear to have already had coronavirus and gotten over it is far greater than those who currently have the disease.

Sumaya Owaynat

“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore and their bodies built the antibodies,” Owaynat told Chicago City Wire.

Antibodies in the bloodstream reveal that a person has already had the coronavirus and may be immune to contracting the virus again.

If accurate, this means the spread of the virus may have been underway in the Roseland community - and the state and country as a whole - prior to the issuance of stay at home orders and widespread business closures in mid-March which have crippled the national economy.

In addition, those who show signs of already having had the illness should be able to re-enter society -- albeit with some modified social distancing measures in place -- rather than sheltering at home as they are no longer in danger. Of those who contract the coronavirus, around 25 percent may be asymptomatic.

A recent study of 1,000 people in the Heinsberg District of Bonn, Germany found that 15% of the population had contracted the virus, many unknowingly and without symptoms.

Of those, only 0.37% died from COVID-19, a figure much lower than those previously cited.

In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently decreased his projection of the number of deaths nationwide from the virus to 60,000 from the 100,000 he predicted just last week.

Labs have been ramping up production of antibody tests in recent days, and some are saying the testing will hasten the end of the crisis and help restore the economy and quality of life to the country at large.

Abbott Labs in particular, which developed a five-minute testing kit, is stepping up efforts to roll out more antibody testing kits.

Many are calling for the kits to be shipped to homes around the country to determine if people have already had the virus or not. Those receiving a positive result would be deemed safe to re-engage in the workforce as well as assist in efforts to help those most negatively affected by the virus.

Roseland Community Hospital, located on the far south side of Chicago, has 138 beds serving a majority minority population with over 96% of the community’s residents identifying as African-American.

In recent days, the White House has sounded the alarm saying early data show the black population is being affected to a higher degree by the virus.