key: cord-349541-7g50vg14
authors: Poulikakos, Dimitrios; Sinha, Smeeta; Kalra, Philip A.
title: SARS-CoV-2 antibody screening in healthcare workers in a tertiary centre in North West England
date: 2020-07-07
journal: J Clin Virol
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcv.2020.104545
sha: 
doc_id: 349541
cord_uid: 7g50vg14

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Please cite this article as: Poulikakos D, Sinha S, Kalra PA, SARS-CoV-2 antibody screening in healthcare workers in a tertiary centre in North West England, Journal of Clinical Virology (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcv.2020.104545

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. In brief, we used a fully automated CE marked chemiluminescent immunoassay (SNIBE, Shenzhen, China) (2) and the analysis was performed by Medical Diagnosis Ltd, in conjunction with Affinity Biomarker Labs.

In total 281 HCW from the renal (242) and biochemistry (39) departments were tested between 4th and 6th May 2020. 205 (73%) were females, 55 (19·6%) were of black, Asian or minority ethnic origin (BAME), 25 (8·9%) did not declare ethnicity and 195 (69·4%) were DIPC. A history of symptoms compatible with SARS-Cov-2 was reported by 103 (36·7%).

Amongst the 22 (7·8%) HCW with previous SARS-Cov-2 PCR nasopharyngeal swabs, 2 were positive, 12 were negative, and 7 did not disclose the result.

Positive SARS-Cov-2 IgG was detected in 17 (6%) HCW and 6 (35·3%) had been asymptomatic. All IgG positive cases were in DIPC HCW (17 out of 195; 8·7%). Six of 55 (10·9%) BAME HCW were IgG positive versus 10 of 201 (5%) Caucasian HCW (p = 0·120) whereas 6 of 75 (8%) were males versus 11 of 205 (5·4%) females (p = 0·384). One IgG positive HCW did not disclose ethnicity.

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