Covid Antibody Tests Not Ready for U.K. Roll-Out, Experts Warn

(Bloomberg) -- Covid-19 antibody tests still need better assessment before the U.K. government rolls them out in a massive effort for doctors and patients, health experts warned.

The tests aren’t accurate enough to reliably show whether people have been exposed to the coronavirus and can’t tell whether they’re immune, 14 professors and scientists said a letter published in the BMJ medical journal. The U.K.’s National Health Service aims to be able to process thousands of samples a day with turnover within 24 hours.

“This push to introduce a non-evidence based test for uncertain gains risks inefficient use of scarce resources,” the researchers -- experts in infection, public health and virology -- wrote.

Antibodies to a pathogen often confer immunity that would mean a person is relatively safe from additional infections and unlikely to pass it on to others. The World Health Organization has also said that antibody tests give no indication as to whether a person is immune.

The tests, supplied by manufacturers such as Roche Holding AG, Abbott Laboratories and Siemens AG, operate on different platforms that make them hard to evaluate and compare.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.