even with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity - in a population of 10,000 with prevalence of 5% - any given positive test is a flip of a coin if it is real or not.....
the only way to improve this is to test ONLY symptomatic patients....
The antibody test measures the presence of antibodies that your body makes to fight the virus though. Those would only come up positive for people who have already mounted a successful immune response (ie. cured people and people who are close to curing themselves.)
Hopefully.
The reality is that we don't know which Ab tests detect antibodies that mean immunity. The so called "neutralizing antibodies" is a separate and rather involved and costly test.(presence of other than neutralizing antibodies means the body has encountered the pathogen but not necessarily that it can defeat it - think of HIV antibodies, or hepatitis C or B)
Too much is still not known about the CCP virus.
even with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity - in a population of 10,000 with prevalence of 5% - any given positive test is a flip of a coin if it is real or not.....
The antibody test measures the presence of antibodies that your body makes to fight the virus though. Those would only come up positive for people who have already mounted a successful immune response (ie. cured people and people who are close to curing themselves.)
Hopefully. The reality is that we don't know which Ab tests detect antibodies that mean immunity. The so called "neutralizing antibodies" is a separate and rather involved and costly test.(presence of other than neutralizing antibodies means the body has encountered the pathogen but not necessarily that it can defeat it - think of HIV antibodies, or hepatitis C or B) Too much is still not known about the CCP virus.