I just read a few articles about current practices of COVID-19 testing here in the USA. This piece by Bryn Nelson at the Daily Beast — “America Botched Coronavirus Testing. We’re About to Find Out How Badly”— is worth a thorough reading, and it does not give much comfort. Hell, at least it’s ramping up a bit now, and nationwide, tens of thousands instead of a few hundred can be tested every day.
But it all got me thinking.
All of the coronavirus testing happening now in our country is only swab-based. Throat and nose samples, tested for the presence of active coronavirus at any possibly transmissible level. In other words, all this current testing is meant to answer only one question: Are You Currently Infectious?
That’s the most important question when a nation is desperately trying to contain a pandemic. In fact if you test positive, then you’re meant to self-quarantine and then come back for repeat testings until there are two successive confirmations that you are non-infectious.
But there’s an emerging, second important question as we all begin to live isolated, hunkered down lives with no way to reach our neighbors in need:
Has the disease actually already come and gone inside you, and you’re now immune? In other words a blood-draw and an antibody test.
We know that COVID-19 has been circulating all over the place here in metro NYC (for example) for a month now. We are learning that many people, especially children and younger adults, breeze through it unaware or barely aware that their body is fighting off an illness. And that’s scary for other obvious reasons, as these people go out and about interacting with society and spreading coronavirus unaware.
But they recover, not even knowing they recovered. And now they’re immune. And we don’t know which people are these immune people.
As we figure out how to live in these new frightening times… this question of who among us is already immune will become an increasingly important one. Have you seen anything about an antibody-based blood test in the works? It would actually reassure me to know, if that’s the case.
Because my elderly mom lives all alone in Massachusetts, and if there is even a 10% chance that I’m already immune, living here in Brooklyn with a toddler and going all over the place in Feb to early March until we couldn’t… I want to know. I want to know if or when I can safely go visit her and give her a hug.
And I think millions of us will grow to have similar questions.
Update: key points made by commenter Ashaman below:
The economy restarts much faster if the population that gets over very mild cases is released from any type of quarantine. And our medical treatment issues get much easier if there’s a population of doctors & nurses that has less of a critical demand for protective equipment.
