Healthcare personnel who are employed by Norton, Baptist, or UofL Health, beginning with those who have recently worked on COVID-19 floors, in the Louisville area. More individuals will become eligible as testing continues and capacity scales up. Check this page for future updates about eligible personnel.

Among the general population, healthcare workers bear the most risk of being infected and infecting others, even while remaining asymptomatic. Health care workers are also among the most essential members of the workforce. Therefore, it is of highest public health importance that we test health care workers for active, asymptomatic infections and for their immunity to the virus.

Testing is free.

Recent studies indicate that as many as 14% of people without symptoms may have antibodies from having a silent COVID-19 infection.

Other healthcare professionals, law enforcement personnel, Pharmacy, Janitorial services, grocery and liquor store employees, and restaurant employees, among many others, are at high risk for exposure and so high priority for testing. Check this page for future updates and announcements about eligible individuals.

This study is initially limited to healthcare workers in the Louisville area. We hope to extend it to the general public.

Testing will begin this week.

Like all laboratory tests, the antibody screening tests can miss some results. The Louisville Co-immunity Project uses three different antibody tests to detect as many positive antibody levels as possible.

There are reports of a few people with antibody levels getting a re-infection, but evidence is showing that it is rare.

The answer to this is, we don’t know. Similar viruses have caused immunity that lasts around 12 months which hopefully will protect us until a vaccine is available.

UofL scientists will closely follow the epidemiological data and answer the following important research questions: Which percentage of the hospital workforce tested positive for antibodies? Which percentage of the hospital workforce tested positive but had been asymptomatic for 3 months? And others. When the answers to these questions become available, they will be shared with the scientific community.

Those who test positive for the virus antibody, will be invited to donate blood for convalescent serum therapy. Following consent, blood we will collected and stored for potential therapeutic use after measurements of neutralizing antibody titers. We will inform each participant whether or not their neutralizing antibody titer meets the FDA suggested threshold for convalescent plasma donation. Convalescent plasma will be used to treat patients with advanced COVID-19 symptoms.

Generally speaking, once you have antibodies it is harder to get sick again with the same virus, but we do not know enough about this virus to know for sure. The antibody test does not tell us whether a person is infectious to others.