SARS-CoV-2 is a virus identified in the Chinese province of Wuhan at the turn of 2019/2020. It causes an acute infection of the respiratory tract designated as COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019).
The main route for virus transmission is droplet infection. Already during the incubation period, the transmission of the virus, even before symptom onset, is possible. Fever, cough and muscle aches are the most common symptoms, whereas fatigue, loss of smell and taste as well as diarrhoea might occur. Sever cases might rapidly progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and might be complicated by coagulation disorders. These cases require an intensive medical care.
SARS-CoV-2 occurs as a high infective virus, which may also lead to asymptomatic infections. Therefore, as part of the pandemic control it is not sufficient to identify and isolate only patients with clinically noticeable symptoms. For that reason, after vaccination and as part of epidemiological studies it might be rather useful not to test only for the virus directly but also to test for IgM or IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in suspected COVID-19 cases.

Our ELISAs are specific for the detection of human IgM or IgG antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and an unambiguous result interpretation is possible. The results with our IgG ELISAs correlate excellently with the neutralizing activity of the samples. In addition, our quantitative IDK® anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG ELISA (K 5004) shows an excellent correlation with the first WHO standard material for anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulins “First WHO International Standard for anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin (NIBSC code: 20/136)”.