Is there a way to test for covid 19 after recovery?
I had symptoms that could have been corona symptoms last week. Unfortunately the testing capacity in my country (Germany) is not sufficient to test every person with symptoms at the moment, so only people who had verified contact can be tested, which I didn't.
It would be very useful, though, to know in hindsight whether I had it, since this would probably make me immune and thus make me much more flexible. For example I could help old or infected people without having to fear infecting them or me.
So is there or will there be a way to test later on whether I had it or not? Or will I never be able to know?
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China has been using antibody testing to see if people had been exposed in their convalescent phase. The USA didn't want to do antibody testing and have wanted to recover virus using a PCR test, but PCR won't show historical infection. Open source antibody tests have been described but presumably will need to wait for FDA/CDC approval ( www.livescience.com/coronavirus-blood-test-antibodies.html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.17.20037713v1 ).
There's no guarantee that infection with one strain gives protection against other strains, nor that immunity is going to be long lasting.
www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/new-blood-tests-antibodies-could-show-true-scale-coronavirus-pandemic
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