Should You Take an Antibody Test?

Less than one percent of New Yorker's tested positive for the novel coronavirus yesterday, the lowest percentage since the start of the pandemic. Governor Cuomo said there were seventeen deaths on June sixteenth, which was also a new low. New York's progress comes as at least twenty other states see spikes. Texas reported a record number of hospitalizations and new cases in Florida rose to the highest level since the pandemic began.

Sweden's Grand COVID experiment isn't having the effect the country's top epidemiologists had hoped for. The country's strategy was to leave schools, shops, and restaurants open throughout the pandemic. The theory was that the country would quickly reach a high level of immunity to the virus, where enough people have contracted the virus to protect most of the population. Contagion rates in Sweden are much higher than anywhere else in

the Nordic region. It's COVID nineteen mortality rate is among the worst in the world. Scientists have been eager to learn whether the flip side of widespread contagion is a higher level of immunity, but only about fourteen percent of people tested in Stockholm had COVID nineteen antibodies. That compares with the study published this month about Bergamo, once the COVID nineteen epicenter in Italy, which showed that fifty seven

percent of that city's residents had developed antibodies. Finally, governments and industry groups from the US to Chile are insisting that food poses little risk of spreading the coronavirus. Some consumers were skittish after an outbreak in Beijing was blamed on imported fish. Chile the top seller of salmon after Norway sought to persuade China that its fish was safe

to import after orders had been canceled. The Norwegian Food Safety authority also said there were no known cases of infection via contaminated food, and although there is no evidence that COVID nineteen can be transmitted through food, experts say more research is needed. And now for today's main story. It's now relatively easy to get tested to see if

you carry the antibodies for COVID nineteen. Urgent care centers and many doctors offices are offering the tests widely, but the signs are still out on whether or not people who have COVID nineteen become immune to it. Not to mention the possibility that we've reported on before that the test you take may not be accurate, so reporter christ and V. Brown has tried to answer the question is

it worth taking the test at all? In March, as the world was preparing to go into lockdown, Eve was having one last hurrah with grad school classmates in London before flying home to San Francisco. Eva's asked us to not use her last name to protect her privacy. Vibe there in the beginning of March, which I assume it was similar, and a lot of America was like coronavirus is coming party as hard as we can now before

this big bad thing comes. They had canceled a ski trip to Austria because of the virus, so they made the best of it. Beacurely. The last thing I did there was I spent like five or six hours in a pub with people um and it was like it was a fairly crowded pub where I was very good about washing my hands, but like otherwise we weren't like they were definitely shared drinks, shared utensils, like we just had no idea. The thing is, the virus wasn't coming,

it was already there. A few weeks later, after a stopover to see some friends in Dubai, Eve was home in San Francisco eating a blue cheese and truffle oil omelet. Despite that strong flavor profile, she couldn't taste anything. I initially thought it was the truffle oil because I thought I bought a twenty all our bottle of truckle oil instead of a thirty dollar bottle. And so it's like this is what I get for being cheap, Like it must be bad trouble oil. Losing your sense of taste

or smell is a symptom of the virus. So you've got tested. It turned out she had COVID nineteen, and so did basically everyone from the pub that night. So imagine her surprise when a few weeks later, two separate antibody tests came up negative. Eve had definitely had COVID nineteen.

Multiple tests had confirmed the diagnosis, as did the fact that so many people she had shared food and drinks with contracted the virus too, But at least, according to these tests, her immune system had not created antibodies to fend it off. Then a third test said she did have antibodies to the virus. This obviously was really confused.

Sing There's no point in doing an antibody test because if you get an answer that you want, you're gonna believe it, and if you get an answer that you don't want, you're going to decide that the test was flood. Antibody tests are everywhere right now. Doctor's offices are sending out text and email blasts urging patients to book an antibody test. Today. In some places, even botox clinics have opened their doors to offer the tests. But as Eve experienced,

the tests can offer more confusion than answers. Antibody tests measure signals in a person's blood that indicate whether they have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. In the past, the tests have been plagued by questions about their accuracy, and even if a test is accurate, experts have no solid proof yet the antibodies mean a person is immune to the virus, or for how long that immunity might last. So the availability of these tests has really wound up

creating more confusion than anything. I talked about this with Andrew Diamond, the chief medical officer of the primary care chain One Medical. He says the company struggled with whether they should even offer antibody test to patients. We did not take this light list, and we had a We had a team of people working on this literally around the clock for weeks to make sure that we did

this the right way. Back in March, the FDA said that antibody tests didn't require any kind of regulatory sign off, and dozens and dozens of tests immediately flooded the market. One major concern was that if the tests weren't specific enough, they might tell people they had COVID nightteen when really they had encountered a related virus. In other words, people might think they were immune when they weren't, and that

could be a big problem. Andrew said that One Medical had a whole team of people whose full time job was event these tests. We knew that everybody, ourselves included as clinicians and all of our members and public health officials, employers, everybody wanted to know from the very beginning of this pandemic. Are people immune once they've been sick? Are people immune who haven't even had symptoms? Is there more immunity out there than we realized? Do we are reclose to her immunity?

I mean, the curiosity was borderline hysterical. One Medical ultimately did decide to offer a test. Once the company found one that seemed good enough. Then the issue was how do we explain to people what this actually does. Because just having a high specificity test that will dramatically reduce this risk of a false positive result, but it doesn't

take that risk of false positive to zero. We started asking ourselves, how are we going to explain what that risk is and why it matters whether you get a false positive? And then, more importantly, how do you interpret a true positive result? So let's say the antibody test actually gives you the true positive that you really do have antibodies, and it's just it's a real result. Then what do you do. We don't know that they confer immunity.

We haven't proven that just because you have antibodies you're immune, Andrew said. The Ultimately one medical hopes that the test might actually lead people to be more cautious, not less. If you were previously thinking, you know what, I already had COVID. I was super sick in February. I already had COVID. I don't need to worry about this. But then you get a negative result, that's going to change your behavior, guarantee it. And we've already seen that people say, oh, shoot,

I guess I didn't have it. And that's actually a vastly more likely scenario, more likely outcome that from the antibody test, because most people end up with a negative test. The number of people who think they had it is far greater than the number of people who actually had it, so dorusful to do change their behavior. They say, you know what, I should take this more seriously. I was getting cavalier out there, but now I am going to

wash my hands and wear this mask, et cetera. Last month, the FDA made changes to its policy and now requires that antibody test developers seek emergency authorization from the agency. Immediately, more than two dozen tests were pulled from the market. It's not the antibody tests don't have any use. The tests can be really useful for researchers and public health officials who are trying to answer questions like how many people with COVID nineteen or asymptomatic, or how deadly is

the virus. But I talked with a lot of doctors, and none of them suggested that for the average individual the test might be useful for anything other than to satisfy a personal curiosity. This was echoed by Congressman Rajna Krishna Morty, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and

Consumer Policy, and a hearing on antibody test recently. The truth is many people mistakenly view anybodies as a get out of jail free card to return to normal life, a dangerous misconception used as a selling point by bad actors. Eve says that knowing she had the virus and tested positive for antibodies has changed her behavior, even if science hasn't fully determined how much immunity antibodies confer. Coronavirus is the disease that no one wants to have, but everyone

wants to have had. And yeah, because you want to you want to be past it. But it almost felt like I'd like gotten across this like really really really dangerous bridge, and I was on the safe side, just like waiting for the rest of the world to figure out how to get across. A few days after we talked, Eve hopped another plane back to London. There, she said, at least she would be able to hang out with her friends from the pub her own personal immunity heard.

That was Kristin V. Brown And that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher Foreheads, Jordan gas Pure, Magnus Henrikson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported

by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shawn. Francesco Leavie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. H