5 ms·
Without widespread antibody testing, we'll never know.
by tinix 6y ago
Without widespread antibody testing, we'll never know.
- nradov 6y agoWidespread antibody testing will not be sufficient to answer that question. It appears that a significant fraction of patients who recover from asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections don't produce detectable levels of antibodies.
- abathur 6y agoSource?
- nradov 6y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-o...
- abathur 6y agoThanks for providing a link. For anyone else who comes along, the supporting statement isn't very prominent; you can find it in: "If you test negative" > "You could still have a current infection." > 2nd sub-bullet
- dilyevsky 6y agoYou may also have some level of antibodies without actually getting sick like what happens with tb. Besides if vaccine is eventually developed antibody test will be useless
- henron 6y agoThere are enough people who were PCR positive that antibody tests aren't necessary for this kind of study.
- abathur 6y agoNot that I have any knowledge of whether anyone is running PCR tests on valid random population samples, but I suspect the concern is that this isn't happening, and that any followup study you could do on these positives will have biases that are hard to correct for?
- nradov 6y agoThat won't work. There is a high false negative rate with those tests, and it's likely that false negatives are more common in those who have only mild infections. A study of patients with only positive tests would be a skewed sample.