Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Heathfield Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Covid test regime algorithm Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 19:01:08 +0000 Organization: Fix this later Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 19:01:09 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="4af7ae8d5580edc504ac0491183c71db"; logging-data="20398"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/+ubbc8OyNRNrR/bHtwfm5E6p7biMFn9t+KFuDUdgtGg==" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:NTdOPuaDpWIH5rs6Df+vgFM2Gz0= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-GB Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:11734 On 08/01/2021 17:41, David Brown wrote: > On 08/01/2021 17:03, Richard Heathfield wrote: >> On 08/01/2021 12:54, Malcolm McLean wrote: >>> When testing large numbers of people for Covid, and expected cases are >>> fairly low, you can reduce the number of test required by pooling >>> samples. You then take the pools which test positive and do further >>> tests to identify the posiitve patients. Pools which test negative are >>> known to have no positive cases. >> >> With false negative rates of anything up to 25% (ref: >> ), that's a somewhat >> optimistic claim. >> > > Aren't those false negative rates are for antibody tests (to see if you > have had it), rather than the tests for the virus proteins (to see if > you are carrying it now) ? No. "A false-negative case of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is defined as a person with suspected infection and an initial negative result by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, with a positive result on a subsequent test." -- Richard Heathfield Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk "Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999 Sig line 4 vacant - apply within