Yes, there is a test that allows you to know if you have just passed COVID without realizing it

With the great tsunami of cases that we are going through in Spain, Sometimes it can seem complicated to detect a possible infection in time. Either due to the lack of symptoms or due to symptoms that have been confused with other diseases.

However, it is important to know if we have passed the disease to continue immunizing ourselves against it. In fact, Health recommends waiting a period of five months to inoculate a booster dose of the COVID vaccine if we just passed the disease naturally.

In this way, the need for a diagnosis becomes even more evident, but, What happens if we have not done a PCR or an antigen on time? There are other methods to detect a past infection.

the way to know is doing a serological test that checks the level of antibodies that we have and that tells us what kind of protective cells we have. These are tests that detect the antibodies generated by the infection, not by the vaccine.

According to the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), this kind of tests do not study the presence or not of the disease, but the presence of antibodies against it.

There are two types of antibodies: IgM e IgG. The former appear in the early phase of the infection and disappear after a few weeks, while the latter remain over time.

Although not all people who have passed the infection generate IgG antibodies, in the long term, their body does generate an immune response to deal with the disease that will remain at least a few weeks after we have been infected, IgM antibodies.

These tests detect the antibodies generated by the infection, since the vaccines against COVID induce an immune response against S antigen. For this reason, if there are other antibodies present, it will have been due to the virus infection.