Editorial: The Power of Antibody-Based Surveillance

A new editorial published by the NEJM on September 1, 2020, concluded 'This study focused on a homogeneous population largely from a single ethnic origin and geographic region. With that said, this study provides hope that host immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting and may be similar to that elicited by most other viral infections.'

'Whether antibodies that persist confer protection and retain neutralizing or other protective effector functions that are required to block reinfection remains unclear.'

'Nevertheless, the data reported by Stefansson and colleagues point to the utility of antibody assays as highly cost-effective alternatives to PCR testing for population-level surveillance, which is critical to the safe reopening of cities and schools, and as biomarkers and possible effectors of immunity — useful tools that we can deploy now, while we scan the horizon (and the pages of medical journals) for the wave of vaccines that will end the pandemic of COVID-19 disease.'

These authors did to report any industry conflicts on interest.