4 ms·
You have to look at both sides of the intervention, right? Like if isolating that kid doesn't prevent any further infections, then it isn't doing any good. If
by maxerickson 4y ago
You have to look at both sides of the intervention, right?
Like if isolating that kid doesn't prevent any further infections, then it isn't doing any good. If isolating them for 3 days prevents a couple other kids from getting infected, it's less clear.
Using PCR tests to evaluate clearance doesn't make sense though, since they can be positive if there are fragments but no viable virus.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago> Using PCR tests to evaluate clearance doesn't make sense though, since they can be positive if there are fragments but no viable virus. It's a cost and time issue. The cost of filtering snot, inoculating a culture dish of infectable cells with the filtered snot, waiting a couple of days for the cells to show signs of infection (cell swelling or bursting), and then running a PCR test on the cells in the culture dish. With high enough throughput you could probably do this for $50 or there about, and maybe three days, to verify whether they were technically still infected three days ago.
- maxerickson 4y agoA series of well administered rapid antigen tests is more useful than PCR. Just waiting a couple days after symptoms abate is also going to bring most of the benefit of testing for clearance.