Antibody tests have been heralded as a crucial weapon in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. This has been a significant focus of the UK Government, which ordered 3.5m home tests at the end of March.
The US has recently jumped on the bandwagon, with the FDA calling on manufacturers to submit emergency use authorisation applications for antibody tests, while the US National Institutes of Health will evaluate the tests’ performance.
Despite early struggles to find and buy tests that were sufficiently reliable and accurate, two large, experienced medical device and diagnostics companies – Abbott and Roche – have now developed antibody tests and are hoping to roll them out in the next month or so. Why are antibody tests important? The