High Priority
•Hospitalized patients with symptoms
•Healthcare facility workers, workers in living settings, and first responders with symptoms
•Residents in long-term care facilities or other congregate living settings, including prisons and shelters, with symptoms
Priority
•Persons with symptoms of potential COVID-19 infection, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, vomiting or diarrhea, and/or sore throat
•Persons without symptoms who are prioritized by health departments or clinicians, for any reason, including but not limited to public health monitoring, sentinel surveillance, or screening of asymptomatic individuals according to state and local plans.
Read that last priority again: That means virtually everyone can be required to get a test.
Is that a violation of your personal rights? And, if you submit to testing, what does a "positive test" actually mean?
Types of Testing: RT-PCR
PCR, short for polymerase chain reaction, is a highly specific laboratory technique. The key to understanding PCR testing is that PCR can identify an individual specific virus within a viral family.
However, a PCR test can only be used to identify DNA viruses; the SARS-CoV2 virus is an RNA virus. Therefore, multiple steps must be taken to “magnify” the amount of genetic material in the specimen. Researchers used a method called RT-PCR, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, to specifically identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It’s a complicated process. To read more about it, go here and here.
If a nasal or a blood sample contains a tiny snip of RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, RT-PCR can identify it, leading to a high probability that the person has been exposed to the SARS-CoV- 2 virus.
However - and this is important - a positive RT-PCR test result does not necessarily indicate a full virus is present. The virus must be fully intact to be transmitted and cause illness.
RT-PCR Testing: The Importance of Timing
Even if a person has had all the symptoms associated with a coronavirus infection or has been closely exposed to persons who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the probability of a RT- PCR test being positive decreases with the number of days past the onset of symptoms.
According to a study done by Paul Wikramaratna and others:
•For a nasal swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 94% on day 0 to about 67% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 2% chance of a positive result.
•For a throat swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 88% on day 0 to about 47% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 1% chance of a positive result.
In other words, the longer the time frame between the onset of symptoms and the time a person is tested, the more likely the test will be negative.