AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Exactly! ICU hospitalizations and deaths are the ONLY metrics that matter! Death rates have been plummeting and there is no evidence that ICU's are being overwhelmed. The number of people testing positive is not informative. The fact is many more asymptomatic people are being tested today than a year ago and we also know that the commonly used PCR tests have a very high false-positive rate.
Increased "cases" ≠ more hospitalizations and DEATHS
5 Q. What is the incidence of false positive COVID-19 tests? What is the cause of this and what is done to minimize this from occurring?
A.Based on PHO Laboratory data, we are aware that the incidence of false positive tests that are later corrected is extremely low. The exact incidence for the province is not known, as individual reports that are corrected do not require notification.
As of May 23, 2020, PHO Laboratory has detected false positive SARS-CoV-2 results on approximately 20 occasions among over 228,000 specimens tested to date for COVID-19, with ~11,000 specimens testing positive. This represents a false positivity rate of less than 0.01% (specificity of >99.99%), which is well beyond performance targets for a laboratory test, even acknowledging there may be some false positive tests that are not detected.
In general, the positive predictive value of COVID-19 PCR assays is excellent, and approaches 100%. At PHO Laboratory, we know this as we are able to generate viral sequence from samples that are positive provided the viral copy number is not near the lower limit of detection of the assay.
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As to the argument of increased cases not translating into more hospitalizations and deaths - well, the data begs to differ:
And Critical Care cases:
Odd how hospitalizations (regular and ICU) and deaths crests and wanes with new cases. I can't believe we are still litigating these basics at this point of the pandemic.
AoD
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