COVID Antibody Testing
We’ve had many questions about antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2. Antibody testing is not yet available, hopefully, it will be soon. But we also do not yet know that having IgG antibodies (evidence of prior infection) means that you cannot get the disease again. So there are many questions we will need to answer before we know what to do with the test results when they do become available.
There’s a great article discussing this in the Wall Street Journal from 04/10/20. An excerpt:
“I don’t know we have enough trust in what an exposure means that it would change the way we deploy our workforce,” Kimberly Hanson, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Utah School of Medicine, said at a media briefing. “We’re still trying to figure out what detecting an antibody response means, and if it’s protective or not, we don’t know.”
Given the potential shortcomings, early serology tests might prove more useful as a tool for gauging the spread of the virus through communities, rather than for determining whether individuals have full immunity.