The Korean Journal of Healthcare-Associated Infection Control and Prevention

Table. 1.

Table. 1. Table 1

CDC guideline for COVID-19 diagnosis in vitro [3]

	Result	Interpretation
Viral testing (testing for current infection)	Positive	Most likely * you DO currently have an active COVID-19 infection and can give the virus to others.
Viral testing (testing for current infection)	Negative	Most likely * you DO NOT currently have an active COVID-19 infection.
Antibody testing (testing for past infection with the virus)	Positive	You likely * have HAD a COVID-19 infection.
	Negative	You likely * NEVER HAD (or have not yet developed antibodies to) COVID-19 infection.
Both (antibody and viral testing)	Viral Positive, Antibody Positive	Most likely * you DO currently have an active COVID-19 infection and can give the virus to others.
	Viral Positive, Antibody Negative	Most likely * you DO currently have an active COVID-19 infection and can give the virus to others.
	Viral Negative, Antibody Positive	You likely * have HAD and RECOVERED FROM a COVID-19 infection.
	Viral Negative, Antibody Negative	You likely * have NEVER HAD a COVID-19 infection.

^* No test is ever perfect. All tests occasionally result in false positive results (the test result should be negative because you DO NOT have COVID-19 but comes back positive) or false negative results (the test result should be positive because you DO have COVID-19, but comes back negative).

Korean J healthc assoc Infect Control Prev 2020;25:63~65 https://doi.org/10.14192/kjicp.2020.25.1.63