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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWould some pathologist explain to me how they know it's the coronavirus?
Do they actually put a blood sample under the microsope for each of these persons?
Cirque du So-What
(27,435 posts)A coronavirus gets its Lyme disease.
Dennis Donovan
(24,302 posts)<snip>
Its unclear exactly how accurate tests done in overwhelmed Chinese laboratories are. On the one hand, Chinese state media have reported test kit shortages and processing bottlenecks, which could produce an undercount.
But Dr. Lipkin said he knew of one lab running 5,000 samples a day, which might produce some false-positive results, inflating the count. You cant possibly do quality control at that rate, he said.
</snip>
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)that's currently limited to treating symptoms. Though desirable for prognosis of disease course, etc.
I remember that during a big influenza A outbreak, because of long lab delays, eventually lab-based diagnosis was typically dispensed with, again the results mostly irrelevant to clinicians in outbreak areas who recognized the patterns and of course immediately started treating symptomatically.
I also remember that, before that in another outbreak, all the clinicians whose reports I edited, most of my clients in California at that time, suddenly started diagnosing "viral illness." That held true even when lab-confirmed diagnoses were in the chart, so I assumed they were directed o to avoid "over-alarming" the public.
Claritie Pixie
(2,199 posts)This test analyzes viral DNA or RNA from blood or other body fluids, done in a test tube, take about 4 hours for results.
In the US, only the CDC can do this to diagnose the 2019-nCoV.
Malmsy
(303 posts)dalton99a
(83,912 posts)Claritie Pixie
(2,199 posts)The only way to detect that the virus is present in the body is through PCR.