Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of recognising positive results from antibody testing as proof of natural immunity, particularly for the purposes of acquiring an NHS covid pass.

No formal assessment has been made. Currently, the duration of the body’s antibody response to coronavirus remains unknown, and there is no guarantee that an individual cannot transmit the virus to others post-infection. Immune protection may weaken depending on the time elapsed since infection, and antibody tests alone do not indicate when a person was infected. For this reason, recovered status in the National Health Service COVID Pass is acquired through a positive Polymerase Chain Reaction test and not an antibody test.