Your #Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
Au lieu d’éliminer les #asymptomatiques de la sélection des sujets testés, les experts interrogés sont en faveur de l’utilisation de tests de détection d’#antigènes viraux, qui sont moins sensibles que les tests PCR (mais pouvant être très spécifiques ▻https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antigen-tests-guidelines.html), en partant du principe qu’en-dessous d’une certaine #charge_virale on aurait peu de chances d’être contagieux.
Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.
Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from being found in time. But researchers say the solution is not to test less, or to skip testing people without symptoms, as recently suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Instead, new data underscore the need for more widespread use of rapid tests, even if they are less sensitive.
“The decision not to test asymptomatic people is just really backward,” said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, referring to the C.D.C. recommendation.
“In fact, we should be ramping up testing of all different people,” he said, “but we have to do it through whole different mechanisms.”