LETTER: The value of testing in the fight against Covid-19
Extensive testing is vital not only to study the current coronavirus outbreak, but also to plan for future pandemics
In the absence of testing we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s like flying an aeroplane with 500 passengers on board, without a flight navigator or GPS co-ordinates, in the dark, in poor weather conditions and an unknown mountainous territory. That’s a disaster. The worst thing in medicine is the unknown.
A PCR test (the nasopharyngeal swab) identifies people who are actively infected. In other words it helps us know who is infectious. The PCR detects the actual genetic identity of the virus. The caveat is that it has a 15% false negative rate. In the context of the scale of the disease this does not negate the usefulness of the test...
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