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By *atEvolution OP Couple
over a year ago
atlantisEVOLUTION Swingers Club. Stoke |
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-tests-may-be-picking-up-traces-of-dead-virus-12064151
'But they found the tests were able to detect traces of the virus's genetic material for a much longer period than it remains infectious - meaning a person who tests positive may have the virus in their system, but won't necessarily pass it on.'
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I've not read it but had assumed that some tests were likely picking up fragments of the virus where someone wasn't infectious. The levels of virus load of someone who is infectious is also important, as others may not become infected and infectious to others if they encountered very low virus levels. Reduced contact times between people should also help with this, assuming that the type of contact is less able to transfer much virus over.
As we won't be able to do incredibly frequent tests on people for some time, or ever, it's likely helpful to have a margin of safety, where infectiusness has passed but tests still indicate someone could be infectious, such as with this fragmentary RNA/DNA testing result. |
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The way to ascertain whether a swab sample contains viable virus is to culture it. However, that takes time and is impractical as a rapid diagnostic technique. This phenomenon has been reported on weeks ago in South Korea and so it not unexpected. |
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"The way to ascertain whether a swab sample contains viable virus is to culture it. However, that takes time and is impractical as a rapid diagnostic technique. This phenomenon has been reported on weeks ago in South Korea and so it not unexpected. "
As some virus' are notoriously difficult to culture in a lab. |
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"The way to ascertain whether a swab sample contains viable virus is to culture it. However, that takes time and is impractical as a rapid diagnostic technique. This phenomenon has been reported on weeks ago in South Korea and so it not unexpected.
As some virus' are notoriously difficult to culture in a lab."
It would seem SARS-COV-2 is fairly easy to culture, it would just slow down the swab results by so long, it would render the system impractical. It might be worth doing cultures on people who are long term Covid patients, in hospital and they're trying to establish if they are ok for discharge. The time is less of an issue then. |
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It's one reason why people like Michael Mina are advocating for a lower sensitivity test. Cheaper (this is theoretical at the moment), can be administered more regularly, and the gold standards of sensitivity pick up stuff we don't need to know. |
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I think a false positive is far safer than a false negative anyway.
There's a study just about to start using DIY antibody testing kits to try and get an estimate of how many people in England have had Covid.
Takes between 10 and 15 minutes and uses a fingerprick blood sample. |
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"I think a false positive is far safer than a false negative anyway.
There's a study just about to start using DIY antibody testing kits to try and get an estimate of how many people in England have had Covid.
Takes between 10 and 15 minutes and uses a fingerprick blood sample."
They seem to have gone quiet on this recently but would be good if it works. The problem with antibody tests is once you have detectable antibodies you are usually not infectious, peak antibodies seem to be around 14 days after infection. So will still need the antibody test. I agree it better to have false positives than negatives especially since its not an particularly easy to get a representative sample from a throat swab a mis sample would give a false negative. |
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"I think a false positive is far safer than a false negative anyway.
There's a study just about to start using DIY antibody testing kits to try and get an estimate of how many people in England have had Covid.
Takes between 10 and 15 minutes and uses a fingerprick blood sample.
They seem to have gone quiet on this recently but would be good if it works. The problem with antibody tests is once you have detectable antibodies you are usually not infectious, peak antibodies seem to be around 14 days after infection. So will still need the antibody test. I agree it better to have false positives than negatives especially since its not an particularly easy to get a representative sample from a throat swab a mis sample would give a false negative."
It's happening - I was invited to be part of the trial yesterday, so they're obviously not being picky.  |
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