SARS-CoV-2 Serology Testing in the Setting of Vaccination

Siemens Healthineers Position

"The position statement that you have here is timely. We need to have this discussion and preparation ahead of vaccinating the general population. Serology status is incredibly important due to asymptomatic carriers, and as these vaccines are introduced the need for robust neutralizing antibody testing would become even more important to understand where we are both before and after vaccination."

“With the advent of variants, what I think that hasn’t changed is the concept of using antibody profiles to make informed medical decisions. Someone that has no antibody response versus someone who has a partial response, but at the end of the day, someone who has very little response or whatever timeframe or data point is clearly at higher risk for infection than someone that has reasonable responses."

“As an immunologist and clinician, I certainly see the value of serology testing in understanding the immune response to vaccines, as outlined in the position paper. With every Covid-19 vaccine targeting the spike protein, it just makes sense that measuring the immune response against spike protein is the focus going forward with serology testing. Further, scientifically I think we’re going to see a quantitative threshold for Covid-19 antibody levels that becomes apparent in which the Covid-19 immune response weakens enough that the risk of infection returns. In this respect, measuring Covid-19 antibodies after a natural infection or after vaccination will determine if someone has reached that protective threshold and remeasuring antibody levels over time will determine the need to reimmunize. In some cases, if people who have had Covid-19 infection or those who have been immunized didn’t produce sufficient antibodies, they may need to be revaccinated sooner rather than later.” 

“I believe that it is important to test immunocompromised individuals after vaccination as well as the individual that lives with them because there is a great variability in the immune response."

“In clinical practice, my patients who have either had the Covid-19 infection or have been vaccinated have been extremely interested in measuring their antibody response.  I explain to them that this is the best surrogate we currently have to predict if they will likely be protected from future infection.  Having had the vaccine myself and subsequently testing my own blood, I was immensely relieved to see I had developed anti-spike protein antibodies. It felt like I had put on an anti-Covid-19 Kevlar suit.”

“Serology testing would be very important in at-risk populations, not just elderly and people with immune disorders, but also for people who have biologic therapies and that’s become more and more common and with newer and emerging diseases, we don’t really have it worked out as well how much suppression is.”

“There is a two-way benefit from testing patients for presence of antibodies. One is to make sure that they have mounted an immune response, especially the vulnerable, and two, making sure that the rest also actually have a long-lasting immune response.”