Antibody tests and “immunity passports” were supposed to be the great hope for safely reopening the economy. The problem is many of the more than 120 tests on the market are inaccurate.
“It is not yet clear which antibody responses, if any, are protective or sustained,” the Infectious Diseases Society of America said recently, cautioning against overreliance on these tests or any “passports” or licenses they generate until a lot more is known.
But businesses or organizations that rush to use them to promote safety and recovery can get it badly wrong — especially without government guidelines on how to protect privacy or avoid discrimination of individuals or disadvantaged groups. Charo explained that guidelines would be preferable to formal regulations; they would be quicker, more flexible and less likely to get tied up for years in court.
The travel industry is another place they could play a role. "Could there be a new public health agency coming out that requires a new passport to travel? I don’t know. But we’ll be on the forefront of all those advances,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said during a recent earnings call. “If tests are going to be used to make broad decisions about work, they have to be widely available."Using tests to decide who can work and who cannot may sound problematic, but some experts say they may be justified for some transitional period, until the pandemic is tamed through a vaccine or some other way.
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