Are coronavirus tests flawed?

kazukazu88さんがリツイート

This is becoming something of a pattern:

China delivers Covid-19 masks/tests to European state
⬇️
China makes huge PR fanfare about said delivery
⬇️
Masks/tests turn out to be faulty or unreliable https://t.co/PHHmVcSaeL

— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) March 29, 2020

Are coronavirus tests flawed?
By James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent
13 February 2020

Stories in several countries suggest people are having up to six negative results before finally being diagnosed.

Meanwhile, officials in the epicentre of the epidemic, Hubei province, China, have started counting people with symptoms rather than using the tests for final confirmation.

As a result, nearly 15,000 new cases were reported on a single day - a quarter of all cases in this epidemic.

But are things going wrong?
A study in the journal Radiology showed five out of 167 patients tested negative for the disease despite lung scans showing they were ill. They then tested positive for the virus at a later date.

And there are numerous anecdotal accounts.

These include that of Dr Li Wenliang, who first raised concerns about the disease and has been hailed as a hero in China after dying from it.
He said his test results had come back negative on multiple occasions before he had finally been diagnosed.

Chinese journalists have uncovered other cases of people testing negative six times before a seventh test confirmed they had the disease.

One possible explanation is the tests are accurate and the patients do not have coronavirus at the time of testing

Another option is the patients do have the coronavirus but it is at such an early stage, there is not enough to detect.

Alternatively, there could be a problem with the way the tests are being conducted.


A final option is the RT-PCR test for the new coronavirus is based on flawed science.

"But it flags up that you have to test people again if they continue to have symptoms."

Spain sends back faulty Covid-19 test kits from China
They were from an unlicensed company, according to the Chinese embassy in Spain.

Julia Yeo | March 27

The Spanish association of microbiologists (SEIMC) warned that the nose swabs developed by Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology had an accuracy rate of less than 30 per cent, according to La Prensa Latina, a Hispanic news site.

検査教徒の人たちはなんでこういう記事は紹介しないんだろうなああ。・・・随分前から言われていたわけだねえ。