Antibody Screening For Covid 19
Antibody tests may offer a more complete picture of COVID-19 infection rates. Also known as serologic tests, antibody tests don’t diagnose active infection. Instead, they look for specific antibodies in the blood—protective proteins forged in response to a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Serologic tests should not replace direct detection methods, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or antigen testing. They do, however, have several important applications in monitoring and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
These tests can help determine the proportion of a population previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and provide information about populations that may be immune and potentially protected from reinfection. Thus, demographic and geographic patterns of serologic test results can help determine which communities may have experienced a higher infection rate.
Serologic testing can help us understand how many people have been infected and recovered.