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How accurate is coronavirus testing?

2020-11-15 | 🔗
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier breaks down the effectiveness of available coronavirus testing.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Back to you, PETE will watched back to the future two with my boys. We move on to the coronavirus. There has been advancements in coronavirus testing, but there is still a lot of confusion. Grammy winner singer, Erykah Badu, left, nostril, positive right, nostril negative doctor only reported the positive results. This after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, says he took four tests in one day and two were positive and two were negative. So can all of this happen? Lets ask Fox NEWS: medical contributor, author of Make America healthy again, Dr Nicole Saphier, Dr Saphier, help me make sense of Erykah Badu and Elan Musk stories. We have two main types of testing for Covid 19. One is the pcr test looking for genetic material of the virus,
that is usually that deem nasal swab throat, swab or spit test. That test is expensive and takes several days for the results. What these people are talking about, those rapid, lateral, assay antigent tests tend to be nasal. Swab theyre, looking for proteins, the rapid tests are rapid, get a quick turnaround less expensive. Why you see a lot of people using them on movie sets and just other places the problem with the rapid antiagain tests? They have can a false negative rate up to high as fifty percent. It is far more likely to have a false negative of that antigen test than a false positive. When you have a positive rapid test, it is really important if you dont have any clinical symptoms to go to get the pcr test. If the pcr test comes back positive chances, are you have the coronavirus whether or not you have symptoms, doesnt really matter?
We know there is high amount of asymptomatic individuals who are still transmitting virus. Will Dr Saphier, we hear other stories im a big sports fan. We hear about NFL players every weekend test positive on a secondary test. No, it comes back negative. I hear you on the two types of tests largely resolves around. How quickly results come back. I got a rapid test, but it was a deep nasal. Swab feels like theyre hitting your brain. I got the results in fifteen minutes. Is that still the less accurate antigen test, which you says, has a potential, fifty percent inaccuracy rate, it is really hard. Honestly, I dont know depends where you were. What lab it is. Some people are doing rapid test on deep nasal swabs. Usually the deep nasal is just reserved for the pcr test, the FDA put out a warning to physicians and laboratory clinicians. There are false positives reported with some rapid tests.
Preprint study on Germany on Friday came out showing one of their tests we dont use in the United States. One of their tests had false positive rate up to ten percent. We know there are false positive occurring with the rapid tests why it is important to make sure it is confirmed with a pcr test again. If the pcr test comes back positive chances, are you have the coronavirus? Will we are relying on the testing numbers so much to make decisions? It is not that we shouldnt, but we should take into account what youre laying out you dont know how accurate these things end up being Dr Saphier thanks. So much for.
Transcript generated on 2020-11-15.