Dr. Cillian De Gascun:

Last week we began the SCOPI, study to investigate Covid-19 infection in people living in Ireland, seroprevalence study, which is intended to look at the proportion of people in the Irish population who would have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. At this stage, the plan is to call forward or invite just over 5,000 individuals who will be representative of the population at large and offer those individuals a blood test to look at the level of antibodies in their blood.

At this point in time, we do not have an indication as to how long immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will last. If an antibody is present in an individual's blood sample, based on previous coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, it is possible that immunity will last for one to two years. At this point in time, however, it is too early to say that.

My understanding is that there is a significant amount of research ongoing in the area of antibody testing.