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Could someone knowledgeable please explain the Zoe app/antibody test thing to me?

4 replies

AvenueQ · 26/06/2020 20:29

I've been trying to work it out from reading around but don't get it. What did they used to count, what's changed, what's the significance?

OP posts:
PatriciaHolm · 26/06/2020 20:49

As far as I can determine; their estimates of new daily infections were, at least in part, based on people telling them they had had a positive test.

This was fine at the start, as every test was a test for current infection.

However, that is no longer the case, as many more people are getting antibody tests to test for past infection, but the app doesn't seem to have been able to differentiate; people are reporting positives but the app can't tell whether they are positive antibody tests (so not relevant for current daily infection estimates) or not.

So they have reevaluated their estimates for daily infection based, presumably, on removing a certain percentage of positives assumed to be antibody positives not current infection ones.

The upshot of this is that their estimate of daily infection has dropped significantly over the past week, but how much is actually a drop in real infection we don't know as they didn't reissue last week's number based on the new methodology.

They haven't redone their overall current infection number either, which makes me suspicious that it is too high. It's about double what the ONS surveillance survey would suggest.

LilyPond2 · 26/06/2020 20:51

I haven't looked in detail, but I think the gist was that a lot more people are now getting antibody tests and reporting the results. If Zoe count antibody tests reported to them now as new positive results, it will artificially inflate the number of new cases, when a person who has a positive antibody test result now may actually have had Covid-19 weeks ago. They are therefore not going to count positive antibody tests as new cases. Happy to be corrected by anyone who's looked at this in more detail!

LilyPond2 · 26/06/2020 20:59

@PatriciaHolm I suspect ONS statistics may underestimate true rate. They are based on swab tests, which I understand may have a 30% false negative rate. (I think this is what they said on Radio 4's More or Less.)

PatriciaHolm · 26/06/2020 21:00

[quote LilyPond2]@PatriciaHolm I suspect ONS statistics may underestimate true rate. They are based on swab tests, which I understand may have a 30% false negative rate. (I think this is what they said on Radio 4's More or Less.)[/quote]
Yes. I suspect the truth may lie somewhere in between!

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