Pros:
There are a few ways antibody testing can be valuable:

To know your status:
Research suggests that many who are infected COVID-19 show no or mild signs and symptoms of illness, so antibody tests could be useful in determining if you had it without knowing. Antibody test results could also help guide your doctor in making clinical decisions about your care.

To understand disease prevalence:
Widespread antibody testing could give researchers a better understanding of how many people have been infected and how deadly the virus really is. Researchers can use this data to predict how COVID-19 might affect us in the future, including why some people are more severely impacted than others.

For convalescent plasma therapy:
Convalescent plasma therapy uses the blood and antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients to help treat others with COVID-19. Hackensack University Medical Center’s convalescent plasma therapy clinical trial, for example, uses the blood of COVID-19 survivors who have a very large presence of antibodies. Testing is needed to make this determination.

To help develop a vaccine:
When a vaccine is developed, it imitates a certain infection, and once injected, it helps build up the body’s natural defense against the infection, creating immunity to the disease. Part of that defense includes the production of antibodies. Testing is needed to verify the body’s response to a potential vaccine.

Cons:
There are three main concerns with antibody testing:

Quality:
There are several different antibody tests for COVID-19. Some perform better than others, and most tests are still being evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Some things to consider: It is possible to be exposed to COVID-19 and not develop antibodies. With low quality tests, it is also possible to receive a “false positive” because you had another type of virus.

False Sense of Immunity:
Some people think having COVID-19 antibodies means they are immune to the virus and won’t catch it again. There is currently no evidence to suggest that people who have recovered from COVID-19 are immune to catching it again. Until more research is done, you should still take proper precautions to prevent further spread of the virus if you receive a positive COVID-19 antibody test result.

Active Infections:
If you test negative for COVID-19 antibodies, it doesn’t rule out the chance that you could have an active infection and haven’t built up the antibodies against it yet. This means that you could be spreading the virus to others without knowing it.