A "rather large number" of antibody tests will be available within a week or so that will determine who has already had COVID-19 and who has recovered from it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Friday.
"They need to be validated," Fauci told CNN's "New Day." "You need to make sure they're consistent and that they're accurate. That's what we're doing now. Both the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are validating them. As soon as they're validated, they'll be out there for people to use."
That doesn't mean that there is a shift away from testing for coronavirus itself, Fauci insisted.
"Those things are done in parallel," he said. "One does not essentially rule out the other."
Even with the beginnings of a turnaround in New York City and other places, Fauci warned that one does not want to get back out prematurely. He also said mitigation strategies must continue, even as difficult as it may be during the Easter and Passover holidays.
Meanwhile, it won't be up to just one person to determine when the economy reopens, said Fauci, and a goal date of May 1 depends on how the virus proceeds, as "the virus kind of decides whether or not it's going to be appropriate to open or not."
"There's also a group looking at the best approach from the standpoint of the kinds of people you want to get out there first, the people who are very necessary to the functioning of society," said Fauci. "At the end of the day, we have FEMA involved, we have Dr. Debbie Birx, the coordinator of the task force and we report to the president and the vice president. That decision will be made at that level."
He added that it's "possible" that Americans may even start to carry certificates of immunity, which could "actually have some merit under certain circumstances."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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