evidence: How Reliable Are COVID-19 Tests? Depends Which One You Mean [...] Testing for the coronavirus has been very much in the news. The first and most urgent focus is on increasing access to tests to diagnose people with current infections. But now other tests are appearing as well. Antibody tests, which can identify people with signs of past infection, are starting to be available. And a third type of test is on the way. [...] In general, these tests aren't reliable enough for individuals to act based on the results. And researchers say, even if you were certain you had antibodies to the coronavirus, it's still unknown if that protects you from getting sick again. Still, these tests can provide good information about rates of infection in a community, where errors in an individual result have less impact.