Coronavirus Blood Tests May Bring a Reckoning

Antibody testing will soon clarify how many have contracted COVID-19, and its real mortality rate. Those results could determine who survives the political fallout.

In Gangelt, a small German town near the Dutch border that had been hard-hit by COVID-19, virologists recently completed a local study in which they set out to test the blood of approximately 80% of the population (~1000 people) for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Their results gave the world its first glimpse into how far the virus has spread, relative to its death count.

Much more data will soon come from around the world as the necessary antibody blood tests are approved, verified, and made widely available. That data—and, particularly, the mortality rate that is calculated therefrom—can be expected to directly impact the future careers of many American public figures.

Until very recently, the only test that has been available has been the RT-PCR test (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction; also called “PCR”) of mucosal swabs, wherein advanced genetic techniques are used to amplify and detect the presence of minute viral genetic material (RNA) in samples. The test, which is rarely used on asymptomatic people, is not very accurate and completely misses people who have already recovered from the infection and no longer have the virus in their bodies. If millions of people have been exposed to the virus and recovered, this test could miss them all.

The blood antibody (“serology”) tests recently approved in the United States by the FDA will identify who has ever been infected—not just those who are actively infected. This is accomplished by checking for the presence of antibodies typically produced by the immune systems of infectees. (Some antibodies, called “IgM” type, can even tell us if the infection is recent.) The virus can be long gone from the body, but the antibodies in the blood remain; serology tests detect those antibodies.