By Don White.

If you think there is nothing you can do individually to help speed us through the COVID-19 pandemic, no way you can help us arrive at our hoped-for economic recovery – just stay home, wash your hands frequently, and practice physical distancing – you need to think again.

And you need to think outside the main strategies detailed by our governments and health departments that amount to an indirect approach at fighting the pandemic’s economic impacts.

The majority – if not all – public health departments in Canada appear focussed primarily on minimizing the numbers of people infected by the coronavirus thereby inferring this is the only way to mitigate economic losses incurred by companies and those who work for them.

And while that focus is unquestioningly essential and critically important for preventing thousands of unnecessary deaths, if the inference is accurate they may be missing an increasingly recognized complementary economic strategy: identifying people who have recovered from COVID-19 and are now immune and not contagious – and allowing these people to return to work.

For the majority of people infected by COVOD-19, the disease is not a 6 – 18 month ordeal as we hear warnings of economic impacts, only a 1 – 2 week mild case of flu. When the 1 – 2 weeks of necessary quarantine are over, there is little need to keep this majority of workers locked out of the workforce and their companies closed. Instead, the more important need is to identify who is now immune and non-contagious and get them back to work.

One means to find these safe employees is to test for COVID-19 antibodies – proteins produced by B cells that bind to invading pathogens. The presence of these antibodies indicate the person who possesses them contracted, then developed an immunity to the novel coronavirus, recovered, and are no longer contagious. The tests for the presence of the antibodies are relatively inexpensive, simple (you can do them yourself), and quick to return results.

In the UK last week, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the government has bought 3.5 million do-it-yourself, antibody tests and will buy more for just these purposes. In Europe, Germany may soon be issuing immune certificates to those eligible to leave the lockdowns.

More locally, as disclosed by BC’s Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, to me in an email, the BC Ministry of Health is currently running “a study designed to do just that with a focus on healthcare workers so they can return to providing care as soon as possible.”

So why isn’t this complementary strategy openly acknowledged and pursued by all levels of government in Canada? Why aren’t governments keeping companies in the loop and ready to re-employ a continuous returning stream of COVID immune, safe workers?

One reason may be that most COVID survivors are not known to public health departments. Only those who were tested earlier and showed positive for the presence of the coronavirus, like Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, can be declared safe by later retesting for the virus’s absence. Canada has been sparing in its use of COVID tests, most health officials arguing there is no need. In the absence of an initial positive test, an individual’s recovery cannot be ascertained by later determining she or he is virus-free.

Another reason for Canada’s slow roll-out may be the dependability of the tests’ results. Not all antibody tests have proven reliably specific to the coronavirus and certifying easily available tests for home use is still ongoing. But given the commitment by countries such as the UK and Germany, there seems every reason also to be aggressively pursuing this complementary option and for letting Canadians know it may be coming.

Which takes us back to being usefully proactive as individuals living in Nanaimo. One thing of which we can be certain is that pressure from the grass-roots can facilitate a needed change.

Independently of whether we are hand-washing, quarantined or practicing self-isolation, our voices can also encourage the ongoing, timely evaluation of antibody tests and the making these tests available, along with certifications of individual, COVID-19 safety.

We can start by contacting provincial officials and members of the BC Government.

Dr Bonnie Henry; Provincial Health Officer; Ministry of Health; bonnie.henry@gov.bc.ca; 250 952-1330

Hon. Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, HLTH.Minister@gov.bc.ca, Phone: (250) 953-3547

Hon. John Horgan, Premier of BC, premier@gov.bc.ca, Phone: (250) 387-1715

Sheila Malcolmson, MLA Nanaimo, sheila.malcolmson.MLA@leg.bc.ca, Phone: (250) 387-3655, (although, I must disclose I never got as much as an auto-reply when I attempted to contact her).

And of course, their federal counterparts: Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada; Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs; Patty Hajdu, Canadian Minister of Health; and Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister.

There’s no reason to limit our proactive behaviour to hand-washing, physical distancing, self-isolation, and quarantine. Contacting the various officials in health and economic departments to aggressively pursue and make available reliable tests for COVID-19 antibodies is another form of personal empowerment. Informing and engaging others in the same actions is additive.

Antibody testing may yet prove to be as vital to our economic health as coronavirus testing is to our physical well-being. Doing what we can to ensure that this additional, complementary approach is properly assessed and implemented in a timely manner may be an important way to mitigate the financial impacts of this pandemic.

Our efforts in this regard may ease the financial impacts on ourselves as well as others. Which is reason enough for going forward. Looking after ourselves and each other, in the end, is usually what it’s all about.