As health officials work tirelessly to contain the spread of the recent cluster of positive Covid-19 cases in Grenada, the Ministry of Health must refute claims that some individuals received false positive results and were later called by health officials to retract those results.
This is simply not true. At no time were the results called into question, and at no time did anyone from the Ministry call anyone in quarantine to retract diagnoses. We therefore ask the media and others to cease and desist from spreading such rumours. Furthermore, we continue to ask, in the public’s interest, that stories be verified with the relevant authorities before they become fodder for consumption.
From the onset of this virus, the Ministry has stood by the integrity of the PCR Test as the scientific gold standard in the industry for diagnosing the virus.
Anyone spreading such rumours that call into question the integrity of the test results is seeking to incite fear, panic, and disorder, and is creating mistrust in an already delicate situation, as we grapple with this outbreak.
We urge the public to only accept official reports from the Ministry, as we have consistently and proactively shared information with you.
Meanwhile, individuals who have been ordered to quarantine are reminded that they must remain in quarantine, and not have contact with others for the stipulated 14-day period.
GIS
“Ministry has stood by the integrity of the PCR Test as the scientific gold standard in the industry for diagnosing the virus.”
That’s an unfortunate position because thousands of scientists and medical professionals have expressed serious concerns that PCR testing is totally unfit as a diagnostic tool. (See Great Barrington Declaration). As far as a “gold standard” that would be wonderful, but there is none. The entire viral genome has never been isolated, or at least not been made publicly available. If this was done I suspect it would prove very revealing and damaging to certain individuals and NGOs. Virtually the only people still trying to prop up PCR are those who stand to profit from the now 100 BILLION dollar Controlya virus testing industry.
PCR originally invented for AIDS has been re-purposed, which could be a good thing. However the inventor stated categorically it was never intended as a diagnostic tool. Also I have no idea about the protocols used in Grenada, but in America and most of Europe the labs generally multiply the base sample is 35-37 times. Anything over 20 times progressively makes the result less and less reliable. To the point that it is 100% unreliable at the point those labs multiply to. We can only hope Grenada’s labs multiply a smaller amount. Again in the US the PCR cost around $150 USD, while the rapid test costs $5. While the rapid test has a 50% reliability rate, it would be a far better practice and much cheaper for the public to give several tests over 3 or 4 days, than staggered PCR which seems to take 48 hrs to get results.
Reference the GBD currently there are over 700,000 concerned lay people that signed it, and then 12,970 scientists, and 38,916 MD’s that signed.
We have been lucky so far that it was controlled. Despite mistakes, we have to commend the Government for keeping things under control up to the point Sandals forced their hand.
We must now apply the guidence given to keep far, wear masks, and sanitize regularily.
I think you have a good grasp of the situation in the US, however, I believe the US CDC is generally in line with guidance from the WHO which has a less than credible record on their handling of this crisis; therefore every country which is following WHO is likely seeing a large number of false positives just like the US. This only fuels fear which is really not warranted by the true numbers, but which governments are using to their advantage.
Interestingly, a large study from Wuhan, China found (among other things) that this virus is never transmitted by asymptomatic carriers (assuming no false negatives which has not generally been the problem with PCR). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w
“There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases.”
This suggests that either A. the test (from the asymptomatic person) was a false positive, or B. the test showed viral fragments from a previous infection which the person had already recovered from.
In either case, the idea that every positive test can be used to justify quarantine is just wrong (and probably illegal) but that doesn’t suit the current agenda to force vaccination on the entire world.