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World

Covid-19 and the false positive trap

16 September 2020

9:11 PM

16 September 2020

9:11 PM

Imagine a world where Covid-19 has been eliminated. To be certain this is true, the government conducts regular tests at random. The number of positive results should be zero, right? Wrong. There will always be a proportion of cases tested that come back with a false positive test result. Thankfully, for Covid-19, the false positive rate is less than one per cent of tests done.

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Dr Clare Craig FRCPath is a consultant pathologist who has worked for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; the 100,000 Genomes Project and for a digital pathology startup Panakeia Ltd.


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