I am trying to answer the following question about COVID-19: Peripheral blood samples are taken from COVID-19 patients for analysis. Why should we be cautious of extrapolating the immunological profiles of people who have gotten COVID-19?

 

Caution should be taken in extrapolating the immunological profiles of people who have gotten COVID-19 due to the false positives and false negatives of diagnostic tests.

Step-by-step explanation

Laboratory tests that detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in people, including rapid immunodiagnostic tests, need further validation to determine their accuracy and reliability. Inaccurate immunodiagnostic tests may falsely categorize people in two ways. The first is that they may falsely label people who have been infected as negative, and the second is that people who have not been infected are falsely labelled as positive. Both errors have serious consequences and will affect control efforts. These tests also need to accurately distinguish between past infections from SARS-CoV-2 and those caused by the known set of six human coronaviruses. Four of these viruses cause the common cold and circulate widely. The remaining two are the viruses that cause Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. People infected by any one of these viruses may produce antibodies that cross-react with antibodies produced in response to infection with SARS-CoV-2.