HOUSTON — The City of Houston launched a new tool Tuesday to track the spread of COVID-19: an antibody survey program.
Health officials say this new program will help them better direct resources to fight the virus as the race to find a cure continues.
"This is really important,” said Dr. Loren Hopkins, the city’s Chief Environmental Science Officer.
Dr. Hopkins is also co-director of the survey, which Houston Health Department is running alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rice University, and Baylor College of Medicine.
"I was in the field myself last week and this weekend,” Dr. Hopkins said. “I met some amazing people who responded and said, ‘I will do anything to help out.’”
Dr. Hopkins’ team is following a plan the CDC has used in other cities. They've randomly sampled 420 homes across 60 census block groups with high and low COVID-19 positivity rates.
People living in those homes can choose to give blood samples to test for levels of COVID-19 antibodies.
Antibodies are proteins that show if someone's had the virus in the past. They also may help fight infections in the future.
"If anybody was positive, we will go back and test them in January if they agree to be tested,” Dr. Hopkins said. “We'll also do another random sample just like we're doing this month."
Volunteer Klely Orozco told KHOU 11 she wanted to help her community.
“It’s also something that is important for me because I do know family members that have had COVID,” said Orozco. “So, because of that, doing that extra research will help those families that actually need the cure.”
Dr. David Persse, Houston’s public health authority, says around 40 percent of people infected have few to no symptoms.
"This (survey) may give us a different view of things, where neighborhoods may have been more severely impacted than we previously recognized, and so we'll redirect our efforts there,” said Dr. Persse during a Sept. 2 press conference announcing the survey.
Dr. Hopkins expects antibody results to be analyzed by early October.
The CDC is covering the survey’s $400,000 cost for outside labor and testing.