13 year old son...positive but...

[freddiemercury]

My son needed medical treatment abroad for a broken arm...but before they'd treat him they did an antibody test. Turns out he had it...which tied in with him having cough/losing sense of smell and taste at end of March.
I decided to get tested too and was negative. He coughed and spluttered all over me. Wondering if it's over optimistic to think that if I didn't catch it from him then I'm unlikely to catch elsewhere... or does it not work like that?

Good question! Think we'd all like to know!

It could be that you didn’t produce enough antibodies or that your produced a different immune response that didn’t use antibodies

Just so odd to imagine that he was literally cuddled up to me coughing....and NOTHING!! yet I might still catch it from a momentary interaction with a stranger...

As above , you have obviously been exposed but you could have had a different immune response , antibodies could have faded or you could have cross immunity from a different coronavirus in the past which helped you get rid of it swiftly before you noticed. Testing for T cell immune response is harder and less frequently done but a report came out recently saying twice as many people had Shown a T cell Response as tested positive for antibodies. Would be Interesting To know the answer for sure though !

It's quite possible you did catch it, but have since lost the antibodies; we don't know yet, but it seems that people can fight it off but then lose the antibodies over time.

This is why people are saying the testing is probably incorrect. This issue has flagged up numerous times that multiple people living in the same household with different antibody results it’s a bit odd.

There is a part of the population - we don’t know what % yet, or exactly why - who simply don’t seem to be susceptible to the virus, even if exposed.

Some people just don't get it at all regardless of exposure it's not a given that everyone exposed to Covid will get it. Our immune systems are all different. Some people won't get Covid, some will but be asymptomatic, others will have symptoms and recover and a small number will die. It's multi-factorial

Or, no antibodies so you tested negative.

People also transmit very differently. So your son might have been coughing but actually there wasn't much active virus in each cough. On the other hand some people are asymptomatic and shedding active virus every time they breathe. Estimates of K factor are quite low for covid. Which means that most people don't transmit but a few people are super spreaders. Your son may just not have been very infectious despite the coughing.

My entire household had it in March. We were all very ill (2 adults and 2 children) but thankfully didn’t require hospitalisation. We have all had the antibody test and two of us have antibodies and two don’t. We definitely all had it.

My friend had it and tested for antibodies. So I thought great, I’ll test too seeing as I had the same thing as her about 4/5 days later shortly after seeing her. Me? No antibodies. Either what we had wasn’t Covid and she had it at a different time or I had a different immune response / immunity has died. 🤷‍♀️

Antibody test hasn't got a great track record :( it's possibly just not picking it up op.

Or as others are saying... you dont have antibodies which means you could get it again 😭

My chemist said even if someone tested positive or test positive for antibodies it doesn’t mean they won’t catch it again. He said all a complete unknown. No consolation for anyone really 😩

You may of had it but you don’t have any antibodies, I’ve had chicken pox three times as a child so I presume I don’t have any for that virus, It’s the same thing.

DH was talking to someone today who had it early on, but now tests negative for antibodies, so it's anybody's guess really.

Some studies (far from all), have suggested that children are unlikely to spread the virus to adults. That may be the case here and you’d be susceptible to infection from an adult. Did you have symptoms?

The antibody test is proving extremely insensitive, that is not surprising, it's a new test on a new virus, it needs "lots" of antibodies to find it. When you consider the antibody tests for all sorts of viruses which have been around for ages also often can't detect antibodies after vaccination or other exposure.

It's simply not a very good test yet.

I know someone who has been confirmed as having it twice. So I wouldn’t rely on not catching it again. He is a health professional (ENT so high risk area)

Most studies found that although children can become infected, they are much less likely to spread the virus than adults

I've just done the NHS antibody test and I was positive the children had it in December

The test tests for lgG and lgM

Sometimes my other half has a cold and I don't catch it, but get a cold from some random person in the supermarket... Same applies I would think

I"m surprised they'd give an antibody test before providing medical treatment! What was their protocol for whether you tested positive or negative? How would that have affected the outcome of whether you got treatment or not? Or was it just part of a general population study, and an easy way to randomly test a sample of the population who happened to be those who needed other medical treatment? I would expect that to be voluntary, though.

@grumblyberries we are in greece snd went to a private clinic using travel insurance. I think the tests can test for recent antibodies and older ones (igg)...he had the older ones so I guess wasnt seen as a threat to bringing it into their medical centre...

If he'd tested negative, though, would they have refused him treatment? Seems a very strange test to insist on. Unless if he tested negative, they went on to give him the swab test to see if he had it at the moment, I guess.