Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission

Re:Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after... by dragonwriter on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:32PM (#27974378)

> At the latest low point in the epidemic, some areas were seeing test positivity rates of under 0.5%. If false positives were a large portion of positives, this would seem to be impossible.

Its quite possible, especially if there is a testing bias toward people who are less likely to have the disease

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Re:Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after... by cameldrv on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @02:58PM (#27976155)

Even if they were testing people that were all externally known not to have COVID, if only 0.5% of people are testing positive, that's the false positive rate.

All the data we have indicates that false positives on PCR are extremely rare. The only place it gets fuzzy is the definition of positive. People who were previously infected can test positive, and people with very mild infections can also test positive. People who have never been infected though essentially do not test positive.

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