WHO: No evidence yet that antibody tests show immunity to COVID-19
It’s taken a little while for the World Health Organization to acknowledge this, but they’ve officially adressed the reinfection problem that’s been occurring with novel coronavirus. In laymen’s terms, the most popular way to check if somebody is immune to COVID-19 is not 100% accurate.
As it stands right now, the antibody/serological tests look for the presence of an antibody created to fight COVID-19. General consensus was that a presence of this antibody meant that somebody had previously contracted COVID-19, and the level of antibodies determined the severity of the infection.
2% of known recovered patients in South Korea have retested positive for coronavirus, according to the country’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https://t.co/tPhABOccNs
— CNN (@CNN) April 17, 2020
But now, more and more information is coming out that people who were thought that have recovered are once again testing positive for coronavirus. The majority of that research is out of South Korea, but we have a feeling other countries will start doing research of their own.
Ok, so in summation. The world thought that this kind of test would help to determine immunity, and be a sort of baseline for loosening social distancing measures. Now, the WHO is saying nope, not going to happen, we need to find something else to ensure that people aren’t prone to reinfection. You can check out the original article from CNBC right here.
Fun! If you want to take your mind off this for a second, check out this roundup of good news stories we covered this past week.
