With the increase in testing going on, we’re now seeing people testing positive now in May, who tested negative in March and April. These are not due to failure to detect the virus then, they have acute infection now. Most negative test results are not false. #COVID19

We’re also seeing lots of people who initially tested positive in March and April still having low level RNA detected in throat swabs. I think this is the problem we’re going to increasingly have going forward. What do these low levels mean?

It’s likely non-infectious virus/ residual RNA in a background of a clearing picture. But that’s not easy to feedback to service users/patients when thousands of tests are being performed daily. They just see positive.

And it then means that discharge to home is delayed and isolation extended, impacting greatly on mental wellbeing. We need as a science/clinical community to work the low-level positive/infectivity dynamics out before we have a second wave (I think we will have one-sorry)