Just in case the video disappears from twatter:
Here is the article from, yes, the New Yawk Times...
/snip
In the article they do recommend more testing, BUT the current testing seems to be extremely flawed.
The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the
fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load,
in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient
is to be contagious.
This number of amplification cycles needed to
find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the
results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell
them how infectious the patients are.
In three sets of testing
data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in
Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing
positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On
Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases,
according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of
contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide,
then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and
submit to contact tracing.
One solution would be to adjust the
cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most
tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive
for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or
37, to detect the virus.
Tests with thresholds so high may detect
not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection
that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long
after a person has left, Dr. Mina said.
/Snip
Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet
Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. “I’m
shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,”
she said.
/Snip
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is examining the use
of cycle threshold measures “for policy decisions.” The agency said it
would need to collaborate with the F.D.A. and with device manufacturers
to ensure the measures “can be used properly and with assurance that we
know what they mean.”
The C.D.C.’s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample
above a threshold of 33 cycles.
Officials at some state labs said the C.D.C. had not asked them to note
threshold values or to share them with contact-tracing organizations.
For
example, North Carolina’s state lab uses the Thermo Fisher coronavirus
test, which automatically classifies results based on a cutoff of 37
cycles. A spokeswoman for the lab said testers did not have access to
the precise numbers.
This amounts to an enormous missed opportunity to learn more about the disease, some experts said.
“It’s
just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T.
values from all these tests — that they’re just returning a positive or a
negative,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University
in New York.
“It would be useful
information to know if somebody’s positive, whether they have a high
viral load or a low viral load,” she added.
I did some google searching for cycle threshold and testing and the number of cycles for the RT-PCR testing and found this article..From back in May
Correlation between successful isolation of severe
acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in cell culture and cycle
threshold (Ct) value of quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain
reaction (RT-PCR) targeting E gene
suggests that patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with
Ct above 33 to 34 are not contagious and can be discharged from hospital care
or strict confinement, according to a brief report published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology
& Infectious Diseases.