Summary:
Noida: As the second wave of the pandemic intensifies, doctors say there is a group of patients who despite displaying classic Covid-19 symptoms is testing negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
.
Noida: As the second wave of the pandemic intensifies, doctors say there is a group of patients who despite displaying classic Covid-19 symptoms is testing negative for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The reasons range from poor collection of swab samples, delayed testing after the appearance of the first symptoms or variants that have possibly changed the disease patterns.
Dr Pratit Samdhani from the state-run JJ Hospital, Byculla, said there are definitely some patients who are not testing positive despite having symptoms such as fever, cough and body ache.
“If the virus isn’t tested in the third to seventh day after the first symptoms appear, there is a higher chance of false negative,” said a doctor with a BMC hospital.
However, not all patients are clear about when they started getting symptoms: some get one-day fever followed by severe cough while others begin with blocked nose.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr Om Shrivastava from Jaslok Hospital said one of the reasons for the false negative could be the fact that the RT-PCR test, which is considered the best to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has a sensitivity between 65 and 70%.
“Tests are not 100% positive, but just because a test is unable to pick up the virus, one cannot exclude the infection.
Doctors have to rely on their clinical judgement,” he said.