State Finally Requiring Labs To Report the Most Important Result of a COVID Test

A positive test for COVID-19 reveals little about how sick or contagious the patient might be. Health officials in Florida recognize this, and the state has taken the important step of requiring labs to include what’s called a “cycle threshold” on all positive test reports. A positive result sets in motion a long and inconvenient…

A positive test for COVID-19 reveals little about how sick or contagious the patient might be.

Health officials in Florida recognize this, and the state has taken the important step of requiring labs to include what’s called a “cycle threshold” on all positive test reports.

A positive result sets in motion a long and inconvenient chain of events. The patient and his or her family members are required to drop everything and quarantine. They must inform all of those with whom they’ve had recent contact, some of whom may be forced to quarantine as well.

When one considers the large numbers of Americans testing positive every day, many of whom are asymptomatic, the question becomes whether all of this trouble is really necessary.

People also question the accuracy of the test results. A couple of weeks ago, CNBC reported that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, took four COVID-19 tests on one day. Two came back positive and two were negative.

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An article from MIT Medical tells us there is no such thing as a false positive. If an individual receives a positive result on a COVID-19 test, “we can be sure that it has correctly detected genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes COVID-19.”

The polymerase chain reaction test is the nasal swab with which many of us are familiar. According to MIT Medical, the PCR test “analyzes samples by amplifying viral RNA in cycles. Most tests … use a 40-cycle protocol. If the virus isn’t detected within 40 amplification cycles, the test result is negative. If viral RNA is detected in 40 cycles or less, the PCR machine stops running, and the test is positive. Because you received a positive result, we know that the test detected the virus in your sample by the time it reached its 40-cycle limit.”

However, “this binary way of viewing test results — positive/negative, infected/not infected” — tells us nothing about the size of an individual’s “viral load.”

“After all,” MIT Medical said, “the amount of virus in a sample is directly correlated with the number of amplification cycles needed to detect it, a number known as its cycle threshold (CT). A positive test that comes back positive in 20 cycles contains a greater amount of virus than one requiring 40 cycles. Right now, we just call both results ‘positive.’ But it’s obvious that the first sample came from an individual with a higher viral load. And the greater the viral load, the more contagious the patient is likely to be.”

In other words, an individual might have been exposed to a small amount of the disease and his or her immune system is fighting it. It will soon be gone. However, if the DNA is cycled enough times, even a trace amount will be picked up and the individual will receive a positive test result.

Meanwhile, another person who is severely infected with COVID-19 will also receive a positive result.

Up until now, there has been no way to differentiate between the two.

The post State Finally Requiring Labs To Report the Most Important Result of a COVID Test appeared first on The Western Journal.

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