False negative test results

Again.. not targeting you KM...

But this is a perfect example of what I mean about Media over-dramatizing to the degree that it's misleading the public into believing the troll farm rhetoric that you shouldn't get tested because they're not accurate or it doesn't work. It's not until you get to the end of the article that the reasons for this is explained by doctors on why some patients may test negative multiple times.  But what I want to know is what is the percentage of patients that fail to show a positive even after multiple tests?  I'd bet that number is very VERY small.    

Experts say this is because, in most people, the viral load – the amount of virus a person carries in their nose and mouth – is easier to detect at high levels, which is typically at the very beginning of the infection.

Fully vaccinated people are even more likely to ‘clear’ the virus rapidly, says Dr English.

‘Because the immune system has been primed, either by prior exposure to the vaccine or the disease, it can very quickly start producing antibodies and attack the virus,’ he says.

All of this rings true in Sarah Vine’s case: she took a PCR test over a week after she began feeling under the weather.

Well YOU read it that way.... but you have a brain in your head .  

HoneyBee08 wrote: KiwiMum wrote: I didn't read it like that. I read it as saying that there might be more positive cases than we realise.  That the testing alone wasn't enough to rely on but that common sense should also have a look it. If it looks like a duck and quacks, then it probably is a duck.  So if you have all the symptoms and feel awful then don't rely on a test to tell you what you already know and take responsibility for your illness. Stay at home and get better and take precautions not to spread it to other people. And that is great, except for what about all the others you may have infected during your incubation period?  That is why you take a test, so gov't can employ the contact tracers to find all those people too.

Well that's the problem with Covid in general isn't it? So many people are infectious before they start to feel unwell, and as for the asymptomatic people.........well they never feel ill. Here in NZ the government is trying to eliminate an outbreak of Covid in Auckland and what they've concluded is that there is one or more asymptomatic cases walking around the community unaware that they have Covid and are spreading it. They are actually proposing going door to door to test people in their homes in the districts where new cases keep cropping up that cannot be linked back to an existing case. It's a tricky one to solve. I'm sure no one is purposefully going round spreading it, but if you don't know you have it and feel absolutely fine then what do you do?