As Europe gingerly eases its coronavirus lockdowns, many governments are scrambling to buy antibody tests to find out how many of their citizens were infected, in the hope that will help them craft strategies to avoid a second wave of COVID-19 cases.
But exactly how - or even if - the information will be of use remains unclear, raising the risk that public funds and government time are being wasted.
That hasn’t stopped makers of antibody tests including Roche, U.S. rival Abbott, Germany’s Siemens Healthineers, as well as Chinese suppliers, from receiving a flurry of orders and expressions of interest from governments. Accuracy, or specificity, is everything, however, since false-positive tests could give people a false sense of security if they believe they had the disease and have some immunity, when in fact they may never have been infected.
It does not want to become embroiled in a political row like Sanofi SA did when it said the United States would be the first to get its COVID-19 vaccine, should it prove successful. But being slow off the mark may not be disadvantage, as there is currently little agreement over what countries should do with the information provided by the tests.
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