Moscow to Begin Free Antibody Testing to Gauge Covid-19 Immunity

(Bloomberg) -- Moscow will begin free mass coronavirus antibody tests on Friday in a program that Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said could lead to the easing of a lockdown that has been in place since late March.

The city, which has over half of Russia’s confirmed cases, will offer the tests at 30 clinics around the city and have the capacity to perform 200,000 tests a day by the end of the month, Sobyanin wrote on his blog Thursday. Residents will be randomly selected and offered the opportunity to be tested in an attempt to determine the level of collective immunity in the city.

The tests will help “detect the disease as early as possible in many people, especially those who carry coronavirus asymptomatically,” Sobyanin said. They will allow the authorities “to make informed decisions on easing existing restrictions without jeopardizing people’s life and health.”

Moscow has 130,716 confirmed diagnoses of Covid-19, although Sobyanin said in an interview on state-run Rossiya-24 Thursday that there are significantly more infections. Last week, he estimated there were about 300,000 cases in the capital.

Covid-19 cases in Russia have exploded in May, with the country averaging over 10,000 new diagnoses a day and this week passing Spain with the second-most infections globally.

However, the daily increase in new cases has slowed from 8.6% on May 3 to 4.1% Thursday, indicating the countrywide lockdown in place since late March has begun to work.

The head of Russia’s public health watchdog Anna Popova said the country had managed to stop the growth in new cases, Interfax reported, citing an interview with state television that will air Sunday.

President Vladimir Putin announced the end of the six-week national stay-at-home order on Monday, and major cities are slowly beginning to ease restrictions. In Moscow, Sobyanin has allowed construction to resume while introducing new requirements to wear masks and gloves in public. He said Thursday that moving too fast to lift restrictions risked triggering a new surge in infections.

Antibody tests can show who has already had the virus and may have a degree of immunity, meaning those people can potentially resume social contact with others. However, experts aren’t sure if they provide protection against the virus or how long any immunity could last.

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