How reliable are COVID-19 test results?

Waseem Shehzad

Ramadan 20, 1441 2020-05-13

Daily News Analysis

by Waseem Shehzad

To question the validity of COVID-19 test results may be considered heresy but it needs addressing.

True, the pandemic is raging with full force globally. The US is leading the world in infections and deaths.

There are, however, skeptics that question the validity of the test results, and hence the numbers.

One of them is Tanzanian President John Magufuli.

He has a degree in Chemistry and was naturally a little curious to know whether the test kits imported from the West were reliable.

He decided to do a little experiment.

He ordered samples from a goat, a sheep and a pawpaw tree and labelled them with fictitious human names and ages.

These were sent to the laboratory for testing.

Lab technicians were kept in the dark about the origin of the samples.

To his surprise (or confirming his suspicions), the testing kits returned “positive results” for the goat and pawpaw fruit. Holy Cow!

For those wondering about the pawpaw fruit (Asimina triloba), it grows mainly in the Southern Hemisphere and has a shape similar to a green mango.

And like the mango, the skin has to be peeled off before eating it.

Its taste is a mixture of mango, peer and the aftertaste of apricot.

Now President Magufuli was having none of the ‘positive test results’ about a goat and pawpaw fruit.

He dismissed imported coronavirus testing kits as “faulty”.

Magufuli made the remarks during an event in Chato in northwestern Tanzania on May 2.

He said there were “technical errors” with the tests.

Some skepticism was in order if the test kits returned positive results for a goat and a pawpaw!

Instead of addressing the issue of faulty kits, the Western corporate media opened their big guns against the government of Tanzania accusing it of being secretive about the coronavirus outbreak.

Should it include goat and pawpaw fruit results in the count of people that have tested positive?

He questioned whether all the people whose results came positive were actually correct.

Magufuli has instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the imported kits.

Some doctors even in the US have expressed concern about what they are being told to do.

They are instructed to enter COVID-19 as the cause of death even if the patient had not tested positive.

Why this urge to inflate the number of deaths from the virus?