Abbott's Mary Rodgers on Antibody Testing

What Role Does Antibody Testing Play?

An antibody test will tell us if someone has recovered from COVID-19 illness. Anyone who's wondering as a patient if they've actually had it already, that could provide peace of mind to know one way or another. Doctors could also be interested in this information since we're starting to learn more about the long-term effects. So knowing if someone has had it will help them manage patient care better.

What Have We Learned From This Pandemic?

The main takeaway for us right now is that we need to remain vigilant, whether that means protecting yourself by following guidelines for a mask, or social distancing, to our virus centers of the world such as myself who need to be on the lookout for any new viruses or changes to this virus that might be coming up next.

What Makes You Optimistic About the Future?

We have the tools in place now to be able to answer some of these questions that we've been asking for a while, and so those answers are coming up soon as these large scale studies are completed and we’ll start to understand more about the virus and how we can protect ourselves. I am also really optimistic about how we've learned so much through this process and that's going to enable us to respond even better if this happens again. And so it’s that learning piece of it that makes me feel like we're stronger coming out of this.