TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands (CMC) — Former legislator, Dr Kedrick Pickering has endorsed the testing of antibodies for COVID-19 in the British Virgin Islands.

Pickering, who is a medical doctor, said using the antibody testing measure would give the government a better understanding of the extent of the virus across the country.

Antibodies are blood proteins produced by the immune system in response to, and to counteract a specific antigen/virus — in this case, COVID-19.

The presence of COVID-19 antibodies means a person has/had the virus.

“The test to see if you are currently infected with the coronavirus is the nasal swab, antibody testing can be done to show if there are persons within the community who had been infected, were not aware of it – were asymptomatic – and probably had recovered,” he said.

According to Pickering, if this was implemented, the entire population would have been already tested and sufficient data would be available to help the government with their COVID-19 policy-making decisions.

Concerning the resources to carrying out testing, Pickering said it would not be a difficult task.

“We could have found the resources. We could have had access to the resources because the United Kingdom government gave us a number of test kits to do the various testing for our population.”

He added that, by utilising the antibody testing measure, the BVI would be able to contribute on the global platform to aid with the fight against the COVID-19 virus.

To date, the BVI has recorded a total of nine positive cases, with seven recovered, one deceased, and one active case.