The novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreaks in Wuhan, China in the end of 2019 presents high infectiousness and has caused thousands of deaths. Performing nucleic acid test of COVID-19 by RT-PCR is one of the mainly clinical diagnosis methods of this pneumonia. However, under the influence of various objective factors, the test results so far have been reported to be possibly false positive and false negative.
The factors include the sample extracting, sample preserving, and different manufactured PCR reagents, etc. In addition, the unknown mutagenesis of COVID-19 could also lead to false negative since it is a single-strand RNA virus. The influence of mutation could be avoided by using multiple sets of primers in different nucleic acid regions.
Despite the accuracy of nucleic acid test, the testing instruments and testing period are relatively costly. So other clinical diagnosis methods such as blood test, and computed tomography (CT) are necessary for supporting in frontline.
Reference:
http://rs.yiigle.com/yufabiao/1182332.htm
王成彬-核酸检测用于确诊新型冠状病毒肺炎阳性率低的原因分析-中华医学杂志
