Are antibody tests and immunity certificates the path towards the exit?

Young patients I meet in A&E clearly want to know if they have the virus - Despite the lock down it is surprising how many young patients with classic coronavirus symptoms just want to drop by and ‘get checked up’ – by which there is a heavy hint that they also expect to get tested. It is already interesting to watch the doctors and nurses trying not to vocalise their thoughts – ‘just go home and stop adding to our workload’, ‘yes the virus makes you feel bloody awful but we don’t have any cure’.

The current recommendation here in this NHS hospital is not to swab patients who are well - so most of these patients will never know whether they had the virus or not. They cannot finish their isolation and go back to being productive members of society. Given the rush to establish a completely new diagnostic test – it is unclear whether the current tests are reliable for such critical decisions. It is hard not to feel sorry for the patients – they want to get back to work and to visit their elderly relatives.

Medical staff are clearly wondering what the exit strategy is - general opinion seems to rest on antibody tests holding the key. In short, these tests would identify whether a patient has ever been infected. Assuming you cannot be reinfected, then these tests would imply immunity that would protect them from infection and importantly not be the worst of all social evils, the super spreader.

The idea of a coronavirus immunity certificate is inescapably linked to the notion of enforced testing to claim benefits or the ‘right’ to return to work. But without a vaccine, is antibody testing the only realistic exit that governments have?