Surfacing a very technical but important, ongoing thread for visibility. We ask the qn - "what level of sensitivity do we really need for a test that is done frequently (say, 1x/day/person) to enable safe reopening?"

Aka, can we move away from RT PCR? https://twitter.com/OmicsOmicsBlog/status/1258433600804073479

Please do jump in and add to the discussion. It IS very technical, and would help to keep it so.

Calling #VirologyTwitter, #DiagnosticsTwitter, #EpidemeologyTwitter #EpiTwitter and more

RT PCR is exquisitely sensitive, but
1) it picks up viral fragments/RNA, so is not indicative of infectious virions. So essentially prone to false +ves, *especially* in recovered, IgG+ patients
2) do we *really* need detect 10 copies/ul?! Or are we doing it just because we can?

Further, scaling up RT PCR to the levels experts estimate is needed for safe reopening and for test-track-trace to work is, simply put, very unlikely to happen - need many tweaks at the least, or need to switch to other modes of testing. https://twitter.com/iamgkadam/status/1256202893071450112?s=20