FDA gives emergency authorization to antibody test from Abbott Labs

May 11 (UPI) -- The Food and Drug Administration has approved emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 test that can detect antibodies in recovered patients, the manufacturer said Monday.

Abbott Laboratories said it plans to ship about 30 million of the antibody tests this month and another 60 million next month.

Abbott said the SARS-CoV-2 IgG lab-based serology blood test is more than 99 percent effective in its ability to exclude false positives and 100 percent effective at excluding false negatives in patients tested 14 days after the first sign of symptoms.

"Antibody testing will help provide a greater understanding of the virus, including how long antibodies stay in the body and how much of the population has been infected," the company said in a statement.

"Having more options of highly reliable tests across our platforms will help healthcare workers and health officials as they conduct broad-scale testing for COVID-19," Abbott CEO Robert B. Ford added. "Abbott is a leader in providing antibody testing at large scale on multiple systems, which is helping meet the needs of laboratories as they look to build testing capacity."

Abbott said it's collaborating with virology labs to validate test results and working to quickly install additional instruments to help begin large-scale testing.