Replacement of COVID PCR test
New effective COVID19 test
The current qPCR-based COVID test is unable to differentiate whether a positive test result is from replicating or non-replicating viruses. This distinction is critical for quarantine and treatment decisions as replicating viruses typically indicate that a person is infectious, while a positive test result from a non-replicating virus may indicate that a person is not infectious.
A person can have non-replicating viruses, which may be the remnant, residual, broken down, or incomplete viruses resulting from the neutralizing effects of their immune system. Although a PCR test can still pick up a positive signal from the broken-down genome if the target regions remain intact, many people continue to test positive for weeks, causing them distress and worry. However, if the positive result is from a non-replicating virus, they should not be concerned and should reconsider any treatments they may be receiving.
While the current qPCR test is considered the gold standard for COVID testing, it amplifies genes located on the positive RNA strand of the virus. The assumption is that the coronavirus is a positive RNA virus. However, our preprint shows that replicating coronaviruses produce both positive and negative strands of the RNA genome, and the virus stops producing the negative strand when it enters a non-replicating state. Yet, the positive RNA strand can still be detected when the virus is not replicating, but the negative RNA strand is not produced.
Therefore, we have developed a solution that distinguishes whether a virus is replicating or not by targeting the negative RNA genome in a qPCR test. If no negative strand is present, then there is no replicating virus. This approach can be easily implemented by replacing the current primers targeting the positive strand with a new set of primers targeting the negative RNA strand, and it does not require significant financial or structural changes.
I hope that testing companies will take note of this publication and adopt our suggested new method for qPCR testing for COVID-19.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.22.525117v1