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Not if they were tested with PCR. PCR can have false negative, but false positive is extremely unlikely.
by hdjrork 6y ago
Not if they were tested with PCR. PCR can have false negative, but false positive is extremely unlikely.
- nil-sec 6y agoIt’s the other way around. It’s very easy to get a false positive due to DNA contamination.
- lbeltrame 6y agoAs 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 agoWhat about the symptoms?
- lbeltrame 6y agoI 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 agoGlobally we are running 100-thousands of tests per week, we must expect to see some false positives under these circumstances.