COVID-19 antibody test passes first major trials in UK with 98.6% accuracy: report

Go To ... success against virus.

Antibodies to which strain of it, I wonder? All of them?

My daughter in London tells me that most of her very large circle of friends have been tested, and most of those tested showed evidence of exposure.

Good, but not great. 98.6% sounds great until you start testing tens of millions.

*The fingerprick tests, which can tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus, were found to be 98.6% accurate*

I'm very sceptical of this claim. Especially given the recent studies published in Nature showing that Covid antibodies may disappear within 2-3 months.

It's impossible to calculate the accuracy of any test unless you have a way to confirm false negatives. For example, if I test negative for antibodies but I insist that my unusual flu in February was Covid 19, who decides whether the test was accurate or not? It's impossible to say. Widespread Covid testing wasn't available back in February and even up until recently only symptomatic cases (the most serious cases) were being confirmed with testing. It's possible that this antibody test might only be 98.6% accurate in detecting fairly recent asymptomatic cases and older symptomatic cases. It may be 0% accurate in detecting asymptomatic cases over 3 months old. There's really no way to know.

There's really no way to know.

Sure there is! Take a group of volunteers who have tested positive and continue re-testing them periodically, charting result variations. Time-consuming but possible.

Fingerprick . . . the following article recommends cotton swab plus band aid,

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26890279/

Should the cotton swab have rubbing alcohol to reduce infection to the finger?

In hospital they usually swab the area with alcohol first, before breaking the skin.

@Laguna

Yes, given more time we could gather more data to better gauge the true accuracy of the test, but as of today I don't think there is any way to know with confidence whether those who test negative have truly never been infected. Remember, the claim is that the test can tell you: "*if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus". *Multiple studies now show that antibodies fade within 2-3 months.

I wonder how they determine the accuracy ?

nandakandamanda said "My daughter in London tells me that most of her very large circle of friends have been tested, and most of those tested showed evidence of exposure."

Is it official data ? If so, then the virus existed in UK long before 2019, because it would take sometime for the virus to infect the population. In other words, UK could be the source and origin of the virus, which was detected and reported actually first in UK in 1960s, as common flu.

zichi said "There is also a new saliva test which is more comfortable and results within 20 minutes. Very good for testing at schools. Also drive in testing."

The best testing is no testing, as Abe's govt is doing, with 100% comfortability and results within zero second. Cheating, as long as no complains, is policy of all freedom govts.

Couple of months ago the UK gov had already announced that they would develop an effective testing kit as well as respiratory machines but a few weeks later it turned out that their new testing kit was beyond useless and there were no plans to make respiratory machines- nevertheless some with close ties to the UK gov made millions of pounds...And now this new testing kit- nobody talks about this in the UK and patients still wait for a week for their results. If the UK gov had valued their citizens at all, they would have prepared their hospitals and the entire nation for the worst since the second wave is now inevitable. But here we are- no PPEs, people walk freely without masks or visors; our hospitals lack basic equipment incl respiratory machines. If the Japanese people want to help us, please tell your gov to send PPEs and respiratory machines to the UK. I don't trust our gov at all!

Good that the UK along with many other scientists are trying to fix the terrible damage that the pesky Chinese government presented to the world,the China virus.

@William77 China did not create this virus, the virus was already present in nature and it was perhaps a matter of time before it jumped onto humans. Sars and flu viruses are nothing new to science but we don't blame a certain nation for them. Similarly we have Ebola and HIV, and BSE which originated from the UK. Who do you want to blame for these?

John,do not put words in my mouth that I didn’t say.

Where do I state that the virus was “created” by China?

You should read my words more carefully.

China didn’t create the virus but for sure their government is responsible for keep the pandemic secret to the world community,if they used transparency and could disclose about the risks of this virus many countries around the world could at least make some efforts to prepare themselves against this disaster.

So yes,it is a China virus.