The former head of the Food and Drug Administration said he lacks confidence that antibody tests for the coronavirus are accurate.
“If you do go out and get an antibody test and you get a positive result, meaning you have the antibodies, I would suggest you repeat it because there’s such a high false positive rate,” Scott Gottlieb told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday.
“I wouldn’t put any stock in any single result,” he said. “Quite frankly, if it was me, I’d repeat it three times.”
Gottlieb said the results of the antibody tests shouldn’t be used to guide a person’s behavior during the pandemic. Instead, he said, they can be useful for trying to determine how many people have been exposed to the virus.
The FDA has approved 10 tests under emergency use authorizations, and nearly 150 are being marketed directly to consumers without any review, according to the Hill.
“If you have a test kit that gives you a false positive, that person might view it as a green light to engage with other people and relax social distancing, and a consequence is they’ll get sick and get others sick,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.
