Antibody testing not ready for market

Antibody tests are one way we can safely reopen the country to get our economy back on track, but experts say the tests aren’t yet ready.

A blood test to tell if you’re immune to the coronavirus is currently being tested by Ranga Sampath’s team with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics.

They’re working with the World Health Organization to see which ones are accurate.

“The demand for the tests and the push for these things has led to perhaps a hurry to get them out,” Sampath said.

He said the rush and a lack of data has created some issues with accuracy, especially when it comes to antibody testing.

“I was appalled when a month ago I heard that Spain was ordering 2 million tests or 600,000 tests of antibody tests that nobody had any data on,” he said.

“Everything we’ve seen so far is people who have rolled these out have invariably backtracked or had to put out a thing saying why they’re not using it anymore.”

Those unreliable tests can have severe consequences.

“You may falsely believe that you are immune when in reality you’re not,” Sampath said.

“That’s on an individual patient level. Now if you scale that to a massive population, communities could open up thinking there’s nothing happening based on really poorly performing tests.”

The state of New York is currently testing an antibody test developed by researchers from Mount Sinai. It’s one of four tests granted emergency-use authorization by the Federal Drug Administration.

The agency said it’s working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to create a way for NIH to test the accuracy of those tests as well.