The Covid test shows positive even though it's another coronavirus altogether?

[whattheheckactually]

I have a very sensible and clever friend who is a health care professional working with the Covid vaccination trials in the UK.

She mentioned to me that the current covid test picks up other - less dangerous - coronaviruses, eg ones that have been around for years and which we have all caught in the form of a winter cold.

I cannot get my head around this. If correct it raises all sorts of questions, including:

• is this the real reason why we have so many asymptomatic people?
• if someone gets a normal cold, will they test positive for coronavirus and have to isolate, with the impact on their families, jobs, colleagues etc.
• is this the reason why positive numbers are so high?
• is it only certain coronaviruses that can show a positive result?

Or is she wrong altogether?

I know my own family have had two bouts of winter cold symptoms this autumn already but testing revealed we were negative for COVID 19.

It is all so confusing and her statement that the COVID 19 test picks up all sorts of other coronaviruses has sent my head into a spin. As I said, my friend is very level headed and sensible, and she would not want to have scared me (I'm immuno compromised).

Does anyone here have any knowledge about this please?

for those going on about a few isolated cases of false positives (mostly from people who have had it apparently) far more are getting false negatives because they either don't do swab correctly or its too early & the virus hasn't developed - (looking at you Pence!) which is why you are have an isolation period to develop symptoms.
doing the test properly you need to follow advise scrupulously

@Hailtomyteeth

Hah! Sorry. Jargon. Permanent (albeit appealable after 5 years) removal from the relevant professional register. Career-ender basically.

There are two possibilities with this swab of nothing.

One, it was sent off unlabelled and unidentifiable. The lab would have looked at the untraceable tube and gone, "can't do bugger all with this" and binned it. There would probably be an incident form. There usually is.

Two, is was sent off under a real patient's name. The results would appear on their record. This would work, from the practical point of view, in that the nurse would get a result back. But faking tests and submitting them under a real patient's name is frowned on, for all the obvious reasons.

In the old days of paper records this might have been doable (send the test off with a hand written label for Mr Micky Mouse and wait for the results to come back). But now everything is computerised? No chance.

It’s not just a case of being on the patient’s record though, is it? Wouldn’t w positive test in a patient result in them being moved to a ‘hot’ area of the hospital and being nursed as a covid patient? Surely you’d have to own up to what you did before a non-covid patient got moved to a covid ward.

If it’s true I’d seriously be thinking about whether I needed to pick my friends more carefully.

Like I said believe what you want. At least I respect your right to come to your own conclusions. I'm not interested in nasty threads!

Booooo. Nasty MNers with their 'facts', 'material reality' and 'scientific consensus based on expert analysis of the available evidence'. Shame on you all.

How dare you dismiss people's right to do their own 'research'? If it's on a YouTube video and a Facebook post and Dave down the pub's mate saw it with their own eyes, what more do you want?

Next you'll be saying that identifying as a different sex/race/species doesn't make it real- bigots.

can I mention the REACT studies (we are now on a the biggest one yet) people are picked randomly - presumably from different ages, communities etc? & asked to volunteer to do test - they are sent advise link (you tube type) to show them how to do
This is how they now if there is a wider increase in the community
Someone close to me has just done this

Know not now!

My best friends, cousins, work colleagues, local doctors receptionist says she stuck two swabs in her ear and not only did they say she was positive, but also that she had a fractured hemoglobin too.

Must be true because, I trust my best friend.

A colleague of mine has been testing positive for more than 4 weeks but is over the illness and has been told she doesn't need to isolate anymore...

The PCR test can pick up dead fragments of a previous Covid 19 infection - up to 74 days. It is far from perfect.

Really?

I've seen the claims on SM and hearsay with friends " I know of someone who booked a test missed the appointment and got a positive a few days later " and my favourite " 2 people were queuing up to get their tests got a phone call to say a relative had had a heart attack so they rushed off to said relative without being tested and got positive results few days later"
A - no one ever knows who the someone is
B - why would you book a test and then not go
C- if you thought you had covid why would you rush off to see someone critically ill 🤔
And these same people telling me all this are very anti MSM and tell me not to believe everything I see in the news- irony!

@frumpety haven't heard about that! Off to Google...

It’s not just a case of being on the patient’s record though, is it? Wouldn’t w positive test in a patient result in them being moved to a ‘hot’ area of the hospital and being nursed as a covid patient? Surely you’d have to own up to what you did before a non-covid patient got moved to a covid ward

Indeed. The existing ward would then have 14 days of being a covid contact ward to manage. And for what purpose, because you couldn't tell anyone what you had done; like others have said, it would be a suspension at best. It's just a nonsense story on every level, but dangerous all the same that people repeat it.

@Sunflowers246

The PCR test can pick up dead fragments of a previous Covid 19 infection - up to 74 days. It is far from perfect.

Really?

I think the Scottish clinical director did say the test can pick up fragments of old virus. May be mistaken though

How have you determined that your friend is clever?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

@Sunflowers246

Yes really. Two I read:

Oxford university study and Korean study. Probably more since.

@raviolidreaming

It’s not just a case of being on the patient’s record though, is it? Wouldn’t w positive test in a patient result in them being moved to a ‘hot’ area of the hospital and being nursed as a covid patient? Surely you’d have to own up to what you did before a non-covid patient got moved to a covid ward

Indeed. The existing ward would then have 14 days of being a covid contact ward to manage. And for what purpose, because you couldn't tell anyone what you had done; like others have said, it would be a suspension at best. It's just a nonsense story on every level, but dangerous all the same that people repeat it.

Every time I hear this story too it's always a friend who's a nurse working in a hospital. Not a friend who's a doctor, a midwife, a physio, a nurse working in nursing homes....

Either there's one total bullshitter of a nurse out there with a lot of mates, or a lot of people are picking the story up as "my friend's friend's friend's friend's friend who's a nurse..." and compressing it to "my friend" or "me".

The older I get, the more it becomes clear to me that my dad was correct when he told me many years ago “The thing is, Short: a lot of people are idiots.”

@Spotthedoggies is correct. I think the confusion has arisen because there are different tests, used for different reasons. The PCR test - the test people take when they are sick or identified as a close contact - is very specific for Covid19. However, I've heard that the antibody test - which is sometimes used to check if you've ever had Covid, or if you still have an immune response etc - has some issues with cross-reactivity. This is not the test used if it's suspected you are ill with, or have been exposed to, Covid19.
(There are other tests too, but I won't go into that here.)
So I think either your friend has mixed up the two tests @whattheheckactually, or else you misinterpreted what she was saying.

@Reallybadidea

IME it's pretty common for normal, respectable people to report urban myths as though it actually happened to them.

That Ladasha/ La-a thing springs to mind lol

@Autumn101

She’s wrong - both DH and DS1 had full on colds and were tested and both rightly negative

Not all colds are coronaviruses, many are rhinoviruses .. so that would come up negative.

She's still wrong, though.

Ah yes, little La-a must have attended about 70% of all the primary schools in the country by now.

The PCR tests is fairly accurate
The antibody test is the one that can pick up whether it’s the current coronavirus or previous ones.

A friend told me today that 70% of positive results are false positives - that can't be right can it? She doesn't believe in covid anyway 🙄

The ‘dead’ fragments of virus is not quite a myth. You can get a ‘weak’ positive but this happens in one of two cases, either at the start of an infection or after a recent infection. You can usually figure out which by retesting, although I’d imagine a symptom history would give a clue.

I think, from something I’ve read recently, that the amount of time the virus is shed for depends on severity. So I’d guess in people with mild symptoms, a weak positive at the end of an infection is likely to indicate a very recent infection.

@Toothsil

A friend told me today that 70% of positive results are false positives - that can't be right can it? She doesn't believe in covid anyway 🙄

If she doesn't believe in it, yet only 70% of +ive are false +ive, what does she think the remaining 30% of correct +ives are +ive for...? 🤣🤣