Coronavirus and Pandemics

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How reliable are these tests?
Over 50 commercial manufacturers are seeking FDA approval for antibody tests, Theel said.

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But Dr. Raed Dweik, chairman of the Respiratory Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, said some of the tests he's seen aren't accurate enough to determine if someone is truly immune to the coronavirus.

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This is because antibodies for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 look very similar to antibodies that respond to coronaviruses that cause other illnesses, such as the common cold.

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Tests could mistakenly identify antibodies as being for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, producing a false positive. Dweik said it will take more time to develop a test that can accurately detect the right antibodies.

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"The timing is tricky," he said. "Developing this test has been fraught with problems."

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In addition, scientists don't know a lot about the protective value of coronavirus antibodies, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert and executive associate dean at Emory University. The test to identify HIV, for example, is an antibody test. "Having those antibodies doesn't necessarily mean immunity," he said.

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Few of the coronavirus antibody tests have been vetted to determine their clinical accuracy, Theel said. No test is 100 percent accurate, she said, and it's up to the clinical laboratories to decide which ones are best for their patients.

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"It's one of the biggest concerns right now because there's so many tests out there and we don’t know how the vast majority of them work," she said.

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Antibody tests that would verify whether a person recently had the novel coronavirus could be available within a week, according to the nation's top infectious disease expert.

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"Within a period of a week or so, we're going to have a rather large number of tests that are available," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN's "New Day" Friday morning.

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