Every day, Le Parisien is mobilized to answer your questions around the coronavirus. Today we are interested in the interrogation of Viky, who asks us if she can take a test to find out if she is immune.
Finding out if you are immune goes through a serological test, which consists of a blood sample to detect - or not - the presence of antibodies against the coronavirus.
However, these serological tests are still under development by many laboratories. On Friday April 17, the Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche, for example, announced the development of a serological test which could be put on sale in early May.
Some manufacturers already offer them, but health authorities recommend not using them, for lack of official approval. "They can be unreliable and give false reassurance to possibly sick patients", tells us the Ministry of Health, stressing that "the priority is to guarantee the reliability of these products".
Doubts about immunization
The National Reference Center (CNR) was mobilized to "assess the scientific quality of the tests". Thursday, April 16, the High Authority of Health had judged that "the data remained to date insufficient to define precisely the place of these tests in the strategy of assumption of responsibility of Covid-19".
But beware: once they are available and certified, we do not know for whom these serological tests will be intended. Generally, unlike virological tests called PCR, serology is used on a representative sample of the population, as for a survey.
Furthermore, there are still doubts about the reliability of these tests in the face of population immunization. The scientific community is not absolutely certain that having been infected once by Covid-19 prevents falling ill again.
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