TEST FOR CORONA VIRUS

TEST FOR CORONA VIRUS

“The COVID-19 Test is called an RT PCR test which stands for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction,” claims a message posted on Facebook in South Africa on 10 September 2020.

“The test does NOT…I repeat…does NOT test for a virus.” Instead, it “amplifies” genetic material – “makes it larger” – and so can give anyone a positive result for coronavirus infection.

The post makes a number of other dodgy claims, refers to already debunked conspiracy theories, and even asserts that “Viruses and Diseases do not exist”.

It also says Kary Mullis, the “inventor of this test” who “died last year at the age of 74”, was “adamantly opposed to his test being used for Covid-19 right up to the point of his death”.

Many different tests are used to detect Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. One is indeed the commonly used RT-PCR test, which involves the techniques of reverse transcription (RT) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Polymerase chain reaction is a method of quickly and cheaply duplicating a piece of genetic information so there is a large enough quantity for the test. The development of this method wonKary Mullis a Nobel Prize.

And reverse transcriptase, as the US Centers for Disease Control explains, uses an enzyme to convert RNA – the form in which the genetic material of Sars-Cov-2 is stored – into DNA, which the PCR process can then multiply.

The post’s claim that the RT-PCR test “does NOT test for a virus” but “tests for genetic material only” is misleading to the point of falsehood. The RT-PCR technique does test “for genetic material” – the genetic material of Sars-Cov-2.

The Facebook post claims that “the inventor of this test, Kary Mullis, stated his test ‘cannot’ be used to diagnose infectious diseases at all”. But Mullis did not invent the RT-PCR test. He developed thePCR method, which has many uses.

This message is brought to you by Sky fm in collaboration with Code For Africa’s iLab Data Journalism Program supported by DW Akademie