The load of virus detected in the #COVID19 PCR test is a powerful piece of information for medical and public health use
Unfortunately it is usually not considered and thrown away before being reported
@RobertFService discusses in
@ScienceInsider
1/x
sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/o…
Ct values aren’t perfect - but nor is listening to a heart or taking an X-ray. Nevertheless, these tests have their place when considered in context - as does the Ct value of the PCR
To discard is to throw out some of the most informative data we have about one’s infection
2/x
It can help determine whether a person is early or late in their course of infection. It can tell us about he direction of an epidemic. It holds immense value. We should consider its regular use as a crucial tool in this fight against COVID. Not toss it for its imperfections.
If curious why your lab may not be reporting - for clinical use these assays generally are not being approved to report out the Ct. they should be... with caveats noted. But MDs should be able to use.
For public health, this should be a no brainer-contact tracing, surveillance.
A method to know if a low viral load represents a new infection on the way up or an old infection that has passed is to repeat test a positive 24h later. If load goes up, then def isolate. I’d load remains very low and no known symptoms/exposure, then very likely late infection
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