[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by O.city

The issue is a pcr test doesn’t necessarily tell you if you are actively infected or not. It’s detecting viral rna which you can shed up to 3 months post infection.

So it’s too specific in catching stuff which is great as a diagnostic tool but not great in that it doesn’t really tell you if you are actively infected or not or if you’re infectious as we now know (and have always) that you’re the most infectious at high titers.

The antigen test actually works better imo for what we need right now

I get that a PCR test will correctly identify what you are looking for but not exactly give you a time for when that positive identification mattered as it pertained to determining the spread of infection.

But beside the scientific limitations of coming up with something quicker, it doesn't seem to me that the public health apparatus has decided we need something quicker than PCR.