Hey Jolly

[jon-nyc]

What’s the false positive rate on a Covid-19 PCR test?

If you don’t know, what’s your best guess.

[Jolly]

@jon-nyc said in Hey Jolly:

What’s the false positive rate on a Covid-19 PCR test?

If you don’t know, what’s your best guess.

rt-PCR is not my forte. I do know that false positives do exist, and can either be inherit to the test or can result from cross contamination. I also know that false negatives can exist due to collection errors or a viral load below cut-off.

Taking a SWAG (and I do mean a SWAG!) I would think the test would be set up to produce less false negatives. If so, that means false positives will bump up....So my stupid stab would be in the 5% or better range...

[jon-nyc]

Totally get that it’s a swag - but if the swag happens to be right, more like 10% of those pregnant women in NY (from that other thread) were truly positive.

[Horace]

a false positive rate is the rate of reported positives which weren’t. Not the rate of true negatives which test as positives. So a reported 15 with 5% false positive would indicate 14 or 15 true positives.

[jon-nyc]

You’re absolutely right. My bad.