But according to Tegnell, when questioned by the broadcaster, it is not yet safe to visit elderly relatives despite this acquired immunity.
“But the normal thing is that immunity means you can’t infect others, right?” the reporter responded.
Tegnell gave a peculiar response: “Yes, but it doesn’t have to be 100 percent. An immunity is not always plus or minus. You can imagine that you get better or worse protection. Or that there is a risk of being infected. We also do not know how long this immunity lasts. That’s what we’re going to try to look at now.”
According to Tegnell, antibody tests already exist today that provide such a reliable answer that you can use them on an individual level, something that the Swedish Public Health Agency advised against as recently as a few days ago.
The announcement by Tegnell to provide broad antibody tests therefore marks another U-turn in Sweden’s contradictory response to the pandemic.
The WHO has also warned about the uncertainty regarding such tests. The most critical issue for different tests is their specificity, which means the risk of a false positive test response. That is, if the test shows that you have antibodies, although you do not actually have them.
“Right now we have no evidence that using a serological test can show that an individual is immune or protected from being re-infected,” the WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove said at a press conference.
Anders Tegnell argues that the tests must show over 99 percent certainty to be relevant. The Roche assay is one of the rare tests that has a 99,8 percent specificity claimed on thousands of patients.
Recent antibody tests revealed no trace of herd immunity – the initial government strategy to combat Covid-19 – even in severely affected areas, such as Greater Stockholm where only some 7 percent of inhabitants had antibodies. Tegnell recently even called herd immunity a “myth”.
No comments.
By submitting a comment you grant Free West Media a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate and irrelevant comments will be removed at an admin’s discretion. Your email is used for verification purposes only, it will never be shared.