https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/are-nc-...130/#print
Meaning potentially less than 30,000 cases in NC (not 269,000 as counted) of individuals with enough virus to be infectious.
"For its coronavirus test, North Carolina's state public health lab cycles a DNA sample up to 37 times before deciding whether it’s positive or negative. LabCorp, the main private tester in the state, has a cycle threshold that’s even higher, at 38.
"The more times you do that, the less virus you start out with," Heneghan said.
Some researchers have tried to grow coronavirus from samples with cycle thresholds higher than 34. But they were unsuccessful, meaning the virus wasn’t active – yet the people who took the test were labeled as positive.
Dr. Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has recommended cutting off the cycle threshold closer to 30 to identify only those people who have enough virus to spread. Lowering the cycle threshold would reduce cases by 80 to 90 percent, he said.
Heneghan said thresholds in the high 30s paint a false picture, causing unnecessary quarantines and negative economic impacts,
"You can point a threshold level which says you are infectious, which is about a million copies per [milliliter} in a sample, which is a cycle threshold of about 25," he said.
That 25 threshold is exponentially lower than what most labs use to test for the coronavirus. The FDA applications for LabCorp’s test, as well as the ThermoFisher test used by the state lab, clearly say that, after a positive result "other diagnostic information is needed to determine patient infectious status."
Testing protocols need to be updated in my opinion.
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NC Covid infections - inflated by as much as 242,000 cases?
