The tests aren't equivalent (there was a very obvious hint in there you missed that alluded to them not being the same) and this has been said farther back in the thread. Ideally as you say they should be isolated and tested under both regimes (this is not a real world consideration any longer and hasn't been for some time- maybe in the winter or summer). This has massive advantages as it means less waiting. Or only PCR testing on those that test positive on antibodies or other suspicion from medical evidence. However, the shortage of tests means even PHE seem to have been talking along using the antibody test. Witty and Valance basically said there's a worldwide shortage of PCR materials and we're screwed. France, Ireland and many other countries have all been making ridiculous promises about bumping up PCR whilst at the same time screaming about shortages.
The antibody test the UK's believed to be looking into doesn't work the first three days of infection. Originally it seems the UK believed that it was much longer than 3 days it didn't work and it's changed its mind and that's why it's buying them and being tested in Oxford. One aspect the UK and other governments didn't like probably because it would lead to criticism was some of the other claims of antibody tests.
As said farther back there are other sorts of tests discussed less in the UK or variants on the PCR, the mobile qPCR. This has been discussed less in recent days, quite possibly because of shortages this renders this fantastic piece of tech completely and utterly useless as it can't be used.
There's basically not enough PCR and loads of hospital staff are going to be seriously hospitalised and running close to dying because of it. There are many other ways of trying to protect the staff such as PPE or people staying at home, but it's not great not being able to have that to help.
Vallance was saying yesterday about tracking the spread and is keen on using antibody tests to see where it's been, how many patients have been asymptomatic and working out the proportion. I know they want very nice peer reviewed papers and to be as accurate as possible, but I feel it's a mistake waiting till it's perfect in their eyes. There are already a lot of false positives and false negatives under medical diagnosis as the scientific debate seems to be whether 50% of patients show no symptoms of whether that's even higher at 80%.
Anyway I said yesterday that I wasn't going to read any more on PCR as it's winding me up how incompetent the western world are, so not only are my posts going to get shorter on the matter that annoy people and lead to misunderstandings like yourself, but I'm not going to post them at all.
At the very least the antibody test may give some certainty and keep some people without the virus out of hospital and milder cases out of hospital and so on and so forth as discussed the last few days when PHE finally became interested in them seriously.
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Used hand scanner and own bag but no obvious facility to clean the scanner or the pay touchscreen.
surley they could find a company that doesn't charge 4x more for their products than everyone else 
he'll be crowing about his special futuristic bellows that he will be convinced is the future..
