Serological detection of 2019-nCoV respond to the epidemic: A useful complement to nucleic acid testing

Jin Zhang; Jianhua Liu; Na Li; Yong Liu; Rui Ye; Xiaosong Qin; Rui Zheng

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.04.20030916 doi: medRxiv preprint medical staffs and healthy controls were also studied. Non-COVID-19 group included several other respiratory viruses such as influenza A, B and adenovirus infection cases, these cases were negative for anti-2019-nCoV specific antibody detection, indicating that the antibody detection has a good ability to resist interference and differential Considering that COVID-19 has broken out in many countries around the world, more than 80000 people have been diagnosed and the number is growing rapidly, the main problem at present is the need for highly sensitive tests to screen the suspected cases and to prevent missed diagnosis by nucleic acid tests, lower false positive rates for antibody testing are acceptable. In the meantime, for patients with morbidity for a week or more, simultaneous positive of anti-2019-nCoV IgM and IgG will be helpful to improve the specificity.