Here we describe a novel immunogenic method to detect COVID-19. The method is a chromogenic magnetic bead-based ELISA which allows inexpensive and quantitative detection of human IgG or IgM antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in serum or whole blood samples in just 12 minutes. As a proof of concept, we compared the performance of our new method to classical ELISA. Person correlation between optical densities obtained using the two methods was 0.98. The novel magnetic bead-based ELISA performed better than classic ELISA to discriminate one COVID-19 case carrying low antibody titer. The chromogenic magnetic bead-based ELISA method described here can be applied in formats for both point of care and high throughput analysis. The method is readily adaptable to use other protein-based antigens and is readily adaptable to investigate other diseases and other applications.