You asked
I have read your article: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodydatafortheuk/30march2021
I have seen that you are working in partnership with University of Oxford, University of Manchester, Public Health England and Wellcome Trust, are any of these providing the testing platform for measuring the antibodies?
If not which laboratory is providing this antibody data?
Which platform has been used to find this antibody data and what testing principle? i.e. Roche, Abbott or Siemens?
We said
Thank you for your request.
The COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) is a representative household survey, which measures the number of people testing positive for infection and antibodies in the UK. Our statistics refer to individuals in the community, by which we mean private households. These figures exclude infections reported in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings.
Blood samples are tested for antibodies by the University of Oxford using an ELISA for immunoglobulins IgG, based on tagged and purified recombinant SARS-CoV-2 trimeric spike (S) protein. From March 2021, we also began testing samples for IgG immunoglobulins against the nucleocapsid (N) protein.
For further detail on our methodology, please see our methods article and the study protocol which provide further information on the survey and methodology (section 9.6.1 Description of study procedure(s)).