Antibody testing for coronavirus disease 2019: not ready for prime time

The tests need work, and fundamental questions remain about immunity

The development of serology testing to detect antibodies to the virus responsible for coronavirus disease 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), first reported by Zhu and colleagues,¹ and followed soon after by many others, has been enthusiastically hailed as the key to monitoring and responding to the pandemic, including the restart of economic activities. This enthusiasm reflects the hope that antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 will provide protective and long lasting immunity and allow recovered individuals to resume their daily lives. Unfortunately, we do not yet know what the presence of detectable antibody signifies, either for an individual or for a population, how durable it will be, or how much serologic variation to expect among different groups, such as those who had an asymptomatic infection.