‘‘The antibody test will identify the persons who were infected with the virus and cured and persons who had gotten the infection unknowingly. All the employees in Ripon Buildings will be tested first before extending the testing to zonal offices," Chennai Corporation Commissioner G Prakash said.

According to a Corporation statement, the exercise has been started by the civic body along with Strumed Solutions Private Limited and Ageis Home Healthcare Private Limited. The testing would be done using rapid test kits, which would show results within 15 minutes.

"The test will identify IgM or IgG antigen in the persons' bodies. If the results show IgM, the persons would be considered having the infection. If the results show IgG, it would be considered the persons had the infection but recovered. If IgM and IgG show negative, the person was neither infected with virus nor contracted the disease earlier," Prakash explained. The antibody tests will also help the civic body in identifying eligible plasma donors based on the amount of IgG present in the recovered persons.

Clarifying the reason for testing civic employees before testing the citizens, Prakash said that more than 44,000 civic employees have taken part in the COVID-19 control measures and it is important to keep them healthy to continue the measures.

Meanwhile, the civic body also distributed arsenic album, a homeopathy medicine, to improve the immunity level of the employees. Speaking to the reporters, Prakash said that some persons, who had given samples for testing, went untraceable due to fear of quarantine. "As many as 275 such persons remain untraceable. We are tracing them to bring them into the system. Providing false contact information during sample collection will put family members and neighbours in danger of contracting the virus," he said.