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Corona19 antibody retention rate from around the world. Compared to New York, Spain, the United States, and the Netherlands, which are considered to have advanced in Europe, and Japan, which has been the lowest in the world, our antibody retention rate is very low. It may seem that our quarantine was successful, but there are many experts who question the method of our investigation, which estimates the number of infected individuals based on neutralizing antibodies.

This is Cho Dong-chan, a medical journalist.

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Guidelines for antibody testing in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several screening antibodies have been approved to help detect hidden infections in the community, but they do not include neutralizing antibodies.

No neutralizing antibodies were mentioned in the World Health Organization's WHO antibody testing guidelines.

Neutralizing antibodies have a short period of time in the blood, and in particular, asymptomatic young patients are not used for diagnostic purposes because they often don't develop neutralizing antibodies even if they get corona19.

For this reason, if a donor donates plasma to develop a therapeutic agent, it is used only for a limited purpose, such as to see if the healer's blood will actually work.

However, unlike other countries, our health authorities calculated the antibody retention rate as a neutralizing antibody.

The problem is that 0.03% of the neutralizing antibody retention rate can show the percentage of people with Corona19 defenses at this point, but it is not possible to determine how many people are actually infected.

One expert who participated in the antibody test interpreted that there was a significant difference in the results of the primary domestic diagnostic reagents and the results of the secondary multinational diagnostic reagents for 1,555 National Health and Nutrition Surveys.

The difference in the positive rate between the two tests was large, so it was not possible to calculate the correct antibody retention rate, and eventually it was replaced by the neutralization antibody retention rate.

Accurate infection scale estimates must be a priority in order to establish proper prevention measures.

In addition, since it is decided to continue testing antibodies every two months, any diagnostic reagents and assays should be made transparent.

(Video coverage: Heungsik Kim, Video editing: Park Ki-duk)