{"id":23604,"date":"2020-04-12T18:09:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T12:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/antibody-testing-will-determine-lifting-of-lockdown-dak\/"},"modified":"2020-04-12T18:09:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T12:39:55","slug":"antibody-testing-will-determine-lifting-of-lockdown-dak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=23604","title":{"rendered":"Antibody testing will determine lifting of lockdown: DAK"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>\u201cAntibody testing will tell us how much of the population is now immune to the novel (new) coronavirus and that would decide lifting of lockdown restrictions,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Srinagar<\/strong>: With uncertainty about how and when to lift the coronavirus lockdown, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Sunday said mass antibody testing is the key to determine when the lockdown could end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAntibody testing will tell us how much of the population is now immune to the novel (new) coronavirus and that would decide lifting of lockdown restrictions,\u201d said DAK President Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<br \/>\u201cThe immune testing, which only requires a drop of blood will enable us to check in minutes the presence of antibodies in person\u2019s blood which indicates that the person had infection and is now immune to the virus,\u201d he said.<br \/>\u201cA positive test for antibodies means the person would be able to return to work without the risk of getting infected or spreading the disease,\u201d he added.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Nisar said if enough people have developed antibodies \u2013 more than 50 percent, we have achieved herd immunity and the epidemic will fizzle out on its own as the virus will not be able to find a host to spread within the population.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf we prove we have high level of immunity then we will be able to lift the lockdown sooner,\u201d he said.<br \/>Dr Nisar said the current lockdown cannot go forever. At some stage we will have to strike a balance between ensuring public safety and getting the nation running again.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said in 2009, there was an epidemic of swine flu (H1N1). It came in and stayed for 2 to 3 months and spontaneously disappeared. It went away because of a certain level of herd immunity that was produced.<br \/>\u201cWe expect that Covid-19 will head that way,\u201d Dr Nisar said.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSudden end to all confinement measures at this point of time would risk exposing untold number of people to the virus. This would lead to second wave of infection that would do away all the good work that has been done so far,\u201d he said.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cKey to preventing a second wave of infection is sequential and differential containment. This is important because the peak of the epidemic is not going to happen everywhere at the same time, as the virus spreads differently in different regions,\u201d said Dr. Nisar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAntibody testing will tell us how much of the population is now immune to the novel (new) coronavirus and that would decide lifting of lockdown restrictions,\u201d Srinagar: With uncertainty about how and when to lift the coronavirus lockdown, Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) on Sunday said mass antibody testing is the key to determine when the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}