Antibody tests can help public health experts track the spread of the infection, but on an individual level, Professor Riley says, they provide little useful information, Sky's Rowland Manthorpe writes
In March, the New York Times reported that the government paid £16m for two million antibody tests from China, only to find out they didn't work.
"If the test is taken 17 days after the onset of symptoms, the latest research I've seen from the University of Washington suggests that it's 100% accurate," says Dr Sam Rodgers, medical director of Medichecks.With this guarantee in mind, I decided to see what it was like. "We simply don't know yet whether the antibodies that we can detect are protective," says Professor Eleanor Riley, from the immunology and infectious disease department at the University of Edinburgh.
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