- Published
- 22 July 2020
- Journal article
Rapid roll out of SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing: even at high levels of specificity, an important proportion of test results will be false positives
- Authors
- Source
- BMJ
Full text
Abstract
We have published a paper with 12 tables (in a supplementary file) with calculations of sensitivity, specificity, and the predictive power of a positive and negative test that will help people understand the concerns about the rapid roll-out of SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests expressed by Andersson and colleagues. With our colleagues we showed that even at high levels of specificity, an important proportion of positive test results will be false positives, when the prevalence of the infection in the population is low.
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Cite as
Gruer, L. & Bhopal, R. 2020, 'Rapid roll out of SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing: even at high levels of specificity, an important proportion of test results will be false positives', BMJ, 370, article no: m2910. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2910