Ask an Expert COVID-19 Testing Questions [Update: Completed]
Update: we’re done! Join us at 1PM ET for a Q&A with Konstantin Kanakis, who is here to answer your questions about all types of COVID-19 testing.
Dr. Kanakis is a medical laboratory scientist with over 10 years of experience in hospital laboratories and is now a pathologist at Loyola Medicine in Chicago. Dr. Kanakis led a public health education project during the 2015 Zika epidemic. Most recently, he volunteered to work as a public health educator in New York City during the current pandemic, teaching everyone from doctors to the general public in coronavirus testing.
Comprehensive coronavirus testing is extremely important for figuring out who has the virus (even if they have no symptoms), and antibody testing can tell us who has had it in the past and may have had some immunity. Both types of tests have caveats: for example, no test is 100% accurate. (We’ve written about the different types of tests here .)
Dr. Kanakis is ready to answer all your testing questions: the pros and cons of different tests, availability and regulatory issues, and what we can learn from the test results – just to name a few. Post your questions in the comments below and he will log in at 1pm to answer them. This concludes the questions and answers. Thank you Dr. Kanakis for the answer and thank you all for the great questions!