Serological tests for COVID-19 antibodies have been hailed as a potential ‘game-changer’ which could limit the spread of infection and relaxation of some of the current restrictions relating to social distancing. Their availability is vital and urgently needed in fighting the current pandemic. Across the world, in many countries, guidance has been given to laboratories and commercial manufacturers to help them to accelerate the availability of tests they develop in order to achieve more rapid and widespread testing capacity. The UK government, for example, has ordered millions of finger-prick tests to allow community testing. Similarly, in the United States (US), COVID-19 has been declared a public health emergency, thereby justifying the authorization of emergency use of in vitro testing including COVID-19 antibodies. The finger-prick tests ordered by the UK government are point-of-care tests (POCT) that use lateral-flow devices from a few drops of blood, with reportedly reliable results available in less than 20 min; these devices are similar in design to those used for urine pregnancy testing.¹

中文翻译：

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COVID-19抗体的血清学测试：必须认识到局限性。

COVID-19抗体的血清学测试被誉为潜在的“游戏规则改变者”，它可能会限制感染的传播并放松一些当前与社会隔离有关的限制。在与当前的大流行作斗争中，迫切需要提供它们。在世界各地，许多国家已经向实验室和商业制造商提供了指导，以帮助他们加快开发的测试的可用性，以实现更快，更广泛的测试能力。例如，英国政府已下令数百万指点测试，以允许进行社区测试。同样，在美国，COVID-19被宣布为公共卫生紧急事件，因此有理由批准紧急使用体外测试包括COVID-19抗体。英国政府下令进行的指刺测试是即时护理（POCT），它使用几滴血液中的侧向流动装置，据报道在不到20分钟的时间内可获得可靠的结果。这些设备的设计与用于尿液怀孕测试的设备类似。^1个