COVID-19 Serology Testing in the Pandemic: Lessons Learned

This session provides an overview of rapid method validation and testing strategies for COVID-19 antibody testing. The current challenges and limitations of COVID-19 antibody testing will be presented along with solutions to improve positive and negative predictive values when testing low disease prevalence populations. The correlation between these antibody tests and the presence of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 will be discussed. Utilization of these assays for the vaccinated patient population will also be discussed. Lastly, a summary of the importance of using a screening and confirmatory approach for COVID-19 antibody testing will be provided.

Learning Objectives: 

1. Recognize the challenges of implementing COVID-19 antibody testing.

2. Explain how COVID-19 antibody testing accuracy is affected in low disease-prevalence populations.

3. Describe the relationship between COVID-19 antibody testing and neutralizing antibodies.

4. Describe which COVID-19 serology assays are applicable to COVID-19 vaccinated individuals.