3 ms·

Could it be that the first test was false positive then and the first symptoms where actually not corona virus?

• hdjrork 6y ago
  Not if they were tested with PCR. PCR can have false negative, but false positive is extremely unlikely.
  • nil-sec 6y ago
    It’s the other way around. It’s very easy to get a false positive due to DNA contamination.
  • lbeltrame 6y ago
    As someone also said, one of the biggest enemies of PCR is contamination, or perhaps the samples had conservation / handling problems which meant the RNA ended up degraded. Given the (currently) very low numbers of these "apparently relapsed" cases versus the total recovered cases, I think it is most likely.
    • hexl 6y ago
      What about the symptoms?
      • lbeltrame 6y ago
        I can think of two ideas on top of my head: - Similar sympthoms but different disease (flu?) - False negatives, and so people were still actually sick In addition, I wonder if those patients had distinct clinical features compared to others. In absence of more data (and these cases are very uncommon) it is hard to tell. Probably a good idea would be to do a study with periodical follow up of a large cohort of discharged patients. This would probably give better indication.
  • pintxo 6y ago
    Globally we are running 100-thousands of tests per week, we must expect to see some false positives under these circumstances.