If you are hoping antibody testing for COVID-19 might help in getting things back to normal until there's a vaccine, you're likely to be disappointed.
Dr. Jim Nora, medical director of infection prevention at Bryan Medical Center, said Thursday that antibody tests for the illness are still too unreliable.
"COVID-19 serology testing does not work well," Nora said, especially as a diagnostic tool.
He said the immune response to the virus is complex and not well understood.
For example, many people with COVID-19 are thought to be asymptomatic, Nora said, and those people often don't have a strong immune response to the virus and may produce few or no antibodies.
It also takes 10-14 days for those infected with COVID-19 to create antibodies, so if they are tested too early, the test will produce a false negative, he said.
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Those factors make the test a non-starter for diagnosing illness, Nora said, meaning the nasal swab test used now is likely to be the standard test for some time.
Antibody tests are likely to play bigger roles in other areas, though, he said.
For example, they might be used in a public health situation to try to estimate overall exposure of the population to the disease.
On Thursday, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said small studies of antibody testing have shown that there are potentially 10 times more people who have been exposed to the disease than those who have been diagnosed.
Nora said antibody testing also is being used to identify potential candidates to donate blood plasma to be used as a treatment for people with active COVID-19 infections.
Some limited antibody testing is taking place locally. Bryan has used it "on a few select patients," Nora said, in cases where patients have had multiple negative COVID-19 tests despite symptoms and the hospital is trying to get a definitive diagnosis.
The Red Cross announced last week that for a limited time it would test all donations for coronavirus antibodies. It's an attempt to get more people to donate to help replenish the nation's blood supply.
There also is at least one private lab in Lincoln offering the tests, and people can get them through their physicians.
Also on Thursday, Bryan announced a further relaxation of its visitor policies.
Starting Monday, it will expand the hours that patients can have visitors from 5 a.m.-noon to 5 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Hospital officials also said that while patients will continue to be allowed only one visitor per day, it can be a different person on different days. Currently, patients have to designate one visitor, who is the only person who can visit them.