News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Loss of smell could be a 'highly reliable indicator' of Covid-19, research says. Parent comment

Re:Loss of smell could be a 'highly reliable indicator' of C... by nradov on Friday October 02, 2020 @07:08PM (#24667948)
Exactly. Anyone who has been out in public recently probably has little fragments of dead coronavirus genetic material in their respiratory tract, even if they're not infected or infectious. Torture the PCR machine enough and you can eventually squeeze a false positive out of it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Loss of smell could be a 'highly reliable indicator' of C... by lostlogin on Friday October 02, 2020 @08:45PM (#24668504)
> Anyone who has been out in public recently probably has little fragments of dead coronavirus genetic material in their respiratory tract

This problem is probably less relevant in NZ than most places. However thanks for the comment (and it’s parent), I didn’t know these things.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Loss of smell could be a 'highly reliable indicator' of C... by timr on Friday October 02, 2020 @10:00PM (#24668882)
Generally agree, but I think the bigger risk is the stray DNA floating around the lab, the medical office where the sample was collected, etc.

Any walk-in clinic is almost certainly going to have a cross-contamination risk, for example.

[ Parent | on HN ]