Corona Testing Comes to Hammersmith

A new Corona testing centre has opened up in Hammersmith, housed inside the Hammersmith Club in Rutland Grove. They've even bagged the handy url www.coronatestcentre.com. The test they use, which I took this morning, is the Boditech Antibody Test, a test developed by a South Korean company.

Google "Boditech Antibody Test" and not a great deal comes up; there is no Wikipedia page yet, for example.  So is it the real deal - is the test worth having?

Boditech Antibody Test

Hammersmith Club

It's hard to say.  Personally, I hope that the result was worth having - I'm very keen to know if I have had the virus or not, and this is what the test is supposed to tell you.

My family, by contrast, is more skeptical.  My wife is concerned that the Corona Test Centre is unregulated and, since the Boditech Antibody Test isn't approved by the Government, that I have paid £150 for a worthless piece of paper. Who is right?

Corona Test Centre
The Corona Test Centre feels more like a pop-up than a proper medical facility. Located in the theatre of the Hammersmith Club, my test today was more or less painless (a tiny pinprick) and was administered efficiently by a friendly PPE-clad nurse who assured me that the test was "100%" reliable for a positive result, and "98% reliable for a negative". In other words, if your result comes in negative, there is a 2% chance it's wrong.

The science behind the test
I asked for some scientific literature to take home, but she referred me to the website, which gives this information about the test itself.  The website states that they "offer COVID-19 antibody testing using globally certified AFIA diagnostic machines from a South Korean manufacturer...our IVD medical devices are TUV certified and CE marked", none of which means very much to me.

Hammersmith Club, 11 Rutland Grove

Why I had the test
In late March, just into lockdown, my four year old son came home from school with a cough. Soon, he had a fever, which lasted a day or two, and then a week later I got a fever too.  My fever was high, slightly frightening, lasted a full week, and was combined with tiredness, and muscle pain.  But I had no other symptoms - no breathing difficulties, and no cough.  My wife also had a fever for a couple of days, but no other symptoms. My six year old daughter was unaffected.

Was it Covid-19? I suspected that the answer was yes, but it could also have been the 'flu. Without a test, it wasn't possible to be sure.  At the time, frightened of the danger of Corona, and mourning the death by Covid-19 of my elderly godmother, we told ourselves it was most likely just the 'flu.

Test Certificate
I was tested this morning, and the results came through at 8pm - faster than the 24 hours promised by the website. My Test Certificate tells me that I have had the virus, and that I am "recovered from Covid-19 and have a degree of immunity". How much immunity, it doesn't say.

If I have indeed had the virus, I can surely now be at least somewhat less concerned about my own safety and, most likely, that of my family.  But the reliability of the Boditech Antibody Test is not yet widely acknowledged, and there is little public information available.

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