The French research team confirmed that only 15% of patients infected with the new coronavirus strain B.1.616 could be screened with a “nasopharyngeal swab”, which is highly inaccurate and requires a lung sample to detect the virus. In fact, the accuracy of nasopharyngeal swabs for other variants of the virus was as high as 97%. The researchers speculate that it may be because the variant B.1.616 reduces infection in the upper respiratory tract in order to escape the nasopharyngeal swab screening method.
According to the South China Morning Post, a research paper published on medRxiv.org on the 10th writes that the Lannion Hospital in cote-d’Armor had an outbreak of an “infectious disease” in January, when many patients showed typical symptoms of neoconiosis, but after screening, the results were negative. The outbreak was puzzling. The doctors were perplexed that these patients were not hospitalized for the reason of NCC pneumonia and arrived with negative screening results, even though the entire process was strictly separate from the NCC patients.
The new strain of the virus, B.1.616, was not detected until researchers obtained samples from deep inside the lungs of these patients.
(Photo / Reuters)
The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible solution to the problem. Nasopharyngeal swabs are known to be 97% accurate when screening for other variants of the virus.
The researchers suspect that the reason for this error is that the B.1.616 variant reduces infection in the upper respiratory tract, so that only a very small percentage of the virus remains in the nose or throat, causing the swab to fail to detect the virus.
On the other hand, the researchers also said that nearly half of the patients infected with the B.1.616 variant died in less than a month, far more than patients with other strains of the virus.
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