Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 17/01/2022
The CDC recommends using tests that allow simultaneous testing for both COVID-19 and influenza
“The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) abandoned PCR tests because of their lack of diagnostic reliability,” Tomaž Mastnak, sociologist and retired research councillor at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, said in his column in the Slovenian daily newspaper Dnevnik on 5 January. The claim has been fact-checked based on a reader’s suggestion.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC submitted a request to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorisation of one particular type of PCR test called the “CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR”.
This particular PCR test for detection of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus was developed by the CDC in February 2020. As the CDC explained, the test was designed “to fill a gap at a time when there were no other authorized COVID-19 diagnostics.” After obtaining emergency use authorisation from the FDA, the test was widely used in US laboratories to diagnose infection with the new coronavirus.
On 21 July last year, the CDC announced that it would withdraw the request for emergency use authorisation for this PCR test after 31 December. They advised laboratories that had been using it until then to gradually start using other FDA-approved tests. The majority of these use the PCR method.
They decided to discontinue this particular type of test because other COVID-19 diagnostic tests authorised by the FDA had become widely available over time and this had led to a decline in demand for the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR diagnostic test in the US, they explained to Razrinkavanje.si. Since the summer, the CDC recommends laboratories use tests that can detect the influenza A and B viruses that cause the flu in addition to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The CDC told Razkrinkavanje.si that such tests show which virus is in the sample. This also means that the test won’t detect COVID-19 in a patient with the flu.
They also noted that the decision to withdraw their request for emergency use authorisation was not due to the test’s performance. “The CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR is a highly accurate test.”
Misinformation about the CDC abandoning PCR tests is not new
Last June we reported that PCR tests are a reliable diagnostic tool for detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This was based on data from the study published in January 2020 in the peer-reviewed medical journal Eurosurveillance. In the study, German authors from the Institute of Virology in Berlin concluded that the PCR method is a reliable method for detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This study was also cited by the World Health Organization in their recommendations for testing in suspected cases of COVID-19 infection.
On 28 December, the claim that the CDC abandoned PCR tests because of their unreliability also appeared on the platform Europe Reloaded. The platform, as stated on their website, opposes measures such as wearing face masks, shutting down parts of the economy and COVID passes, and supports natural remedies to boost our immune systems and medications such as ivermectin.
A day later the claim that the CDC abandoned PCR tests was posted by the American news site Gateway Pundit, a self-described conservative website that cites truth as a core value of its editorial policy.
However, several scientific studies have shown that Gateway Pundit is a source of fake news and conspiracy theories. The empirical investigation published last year in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Digital Journalism found that it is one of the top twenty sources of fake news about COVID-19 on 8kun and Gab, two conspiracy theory social media platforms.
Furthermore, according to research published last year in Big Data & Society, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by SAGE, publisher of various journals, Gateway Pundit is the fourth most frequent source of unreliable information about the pandemic on Twitter.
Misinformation that the CDC abandoned PCR tests because they are unreliable and admitted that PCR tests could not differentiate between influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses was already circulating on social media last summer. At the time, the lack of credibility of these reports was already noted by several fact-checking organisations, including Reuters and PolitiFact.
We asked Tomaž Mastnak for the source of his claim that the CDC abandoned PCR tests because of their unreliability and sent him a request for comment on our findings.
The claim that the CDC abandoned PCR tests because of their lack of diagnostic accuracy is false.
