Talk:COVID-19 testing
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the COVID-19 testing article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL |
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 7 days ![]() |
![]() | The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to COVID-19, broadly construed, which has been designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | Text and/or other creative content from COVID-19 testing was copied or moved into Development of COVID-19 tests. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
![]() | WikiProject COVID-19 consensus WikiProject COVID-19 aims to add to and build consensus for pages relating to COVID-19. They have so far discussed items listed below. Please discuss proposed improvements to them at the project talk page.
To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to . |
![]() | Other talk page banners | ||
|
A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion
[edit]The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:
You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:07, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Testing after vaccination
[edit]It's my understanding that the Covid-19 vaccine works by producing antibodies and that (some?) covid tests test for the presence of antibodies. If this is the case, it would seem logical that someone who has been vaccinated should not take the covid-detection tests that test for antibodies because such tests will always yield positive results. If my rationale is correct, then this point should be included in the article, shouldn't it? Mercy11 (talk) 00:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Distortion of comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci
[edit]Currently the article includes the following sentence:
On July 16, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the US CDC indicated that positive results obtained from RT-PCR tests run at more than 35 cycles were almost always "just dead nucleotides".
This is a dangerous misinterpretation of what Fauci actually said. As one can verify by going back to the source, his actual words were (taken from YouTube automated transcript, condensed and punctuated for clarity):
what is now sort of, uh, evolving into a bit of a standard, that if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more that the chances of it being replication competent are minuscule … somebody comes in and they repeat their PCR and it's like 37 cycle threshold but … you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle, so I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it's just, it's just dead nucleotides, period.
Fauci is clearly talking about results you might get when you perform the PCR test. A cycle threshold is a PCR result. If you get a cycle threshold of 38 (it doesn’t finish until the 38th cycle) that’s a very weak positive result.
The sentence currently in the article, however, incorrectly implies that some method of performing the PCR test sets it up for failure. There’s actually no such thing as “running PCR at N cycles”, but the current phrasing falsely suggests there is, and furthermore that it’s a method prone to generating false positives (as opposed to knowing when you get results which are only weakly positive, those are the ones likeliest to be false positives.)
This is dangerous misinformation, as it feeds into conspiracy narratives about “elites” instituting testing that they know is faulty for nefarious purposes. Again, Fauci says nothing in the cited source which reflects on the testing method; he is clearly saying that certain results that may be obtained indicate probable false positives - and note what he says about it “evolving” (present tense) into a standard. There’s nothing to support the idea that it could have been known beforehand “don’t bother continuing if you don’t have a result in 35 cycles because then it will be dead nucleotides.” - 209.6.11.210 (talk) 04:42, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
- When is this going to be corrected? Fauci was talking about cycle threshold, not cycles so the text as it is now is wrong.
- Also missing the fact Fauci was talking about retesting someone who already tested positive earier and he doesn't say his remark was about Ct>35 in general. Noef101 (talk) 22:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Swabbing throat as well as nose for rapid tests?
[edit]There was a meme about using the swab on your throat before running it through both sides of your nose when collecting a sample for testing. This supposedly improved the false negative rate for Omicron infections.[1][2] Here's an official recommended method from Ontario Health, which is still the current recommendation.[3] However, there was little or weak evidence for this, and as far as I know, nobody ever actually confirmed whether this improves test accuracy or not. Does somebody know more, and can they add it to the article? -- Gnuish (talk) 18:30, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
References
- ^ McNamara, Damian (2022-01-11). "Swab Nose, Throat, or Both for COVID-19 Rapid Tests?". WebMD. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
- ^ Weichel, Andrew (2022-03-20). "Should you swab your throat while taking a COVID-19 rapid test? Answers vary by jurisdiction". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
- ^ "Oral/Nasal Collection Instructions for RAT -- COVID-19" (PDF). Ontario Health. 2022-02-09. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
Wiki Education assignment: Technical and Scientific Communication
[edit] This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 9 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cailinharris (article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Cailinharris (talk) 14:34, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I added some more information about imaging testing for COVID-19 for my wikiedu assignment. Something I think that can be added would be a "other" option for the covid testing in the contents box. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cailinharris (talk • contribs) 14:26, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
- B-Class COVID-19 articles
- High-importance COVID-19 articles
- WikiProject COVID-19 articles
- B-Class medicine articles
- High-importance medicine articles
- B-Class pulmonology articles
- Low-importance pulmonology articles
- Pulmonology task force articles
- All WikiProject Medicine pages
- B-Class Molecular Biology articles
- Low-importance Molecular Biology articles
- All WikiProject Molecular Biology pages
- B-Class Disaster management articles
- Low-importance Disaster management articles
- B-Class virus articles
- Low-importance virus articles
- WikiProject Viruses articles