As New Zealand approached alert level 2, which means people can reconnect with their friends and family, go to shopping centers, and join public gatherings not larger than 100 people at a time, Auckland expert warns on the necessity of COVID-19 antibody testing.
The epidemiologist Simon Thornley says that during the alert level 2, the health care expert should pay more attention to the recovered patients, than the ones that are currently ill from the virus.
“This test gives important information about who in the community has recovered from infection and is thus unlikely to get the infection and pass it on to others,” Thornley said.
“The current Covid-19 test only detects if the virus is currently in the body. Serology is a test of a person’s immune response to the virus, which persists long after the virus has disappeared.”
For this reason, antibody testing is more crucial now than in the previous alert levels when more people were infected. Detecting the “silent killers” (people who carry the virus, have no symptoms, but can infect others who are more vulnerable and could die) and isolating them, is the possible way out to the complete liberation from coronavirus claws in New Zealand.
The antibody tests are only worth trying if showing 99-100% accuracy. Every other percentage can lead to a large number of false-positive tests, which will lead the country a few steps back.