Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) Friday said RT-PCR test could miss new COVID-19 variants.
“A negative test does not exclude the possibility of infection with a mutated strain of the novel coronavirus,” said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan.
He said that the RT-PCR test was the most common diagnostic test used to identify people infected with COVID-19 infection but one could get a false negative test result if a mutant infects a person.
“New variants have the ability to evade detection by the molecular test,” Dr Hassan said. “This means a person infected with a mutant may not be detected and consequently may not be isolated from the healthy population.”
He said these individuals would continue to spread the disease in the community.
“Picking up variants is critical to devise appropriate and effective health policy to prevent and control their spread in the community,” Dr Hassan said. “In order to detect COVID-19 variants, genomic sequencing which assesses the complete genetic structure of the virus is required.”