Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.

The usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus.

Tests authorized by the F.D.A. provide only a yes-no answer to infection, and will identify as positive patients with low amounts of virus in their bodies.Credit…Johnny Milano for The New York Times
By Apoorva Mandavilli
Aug. 29, 2020

Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.

Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from
— Lees op www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

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