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Rapid Response:
Re: Covid-19: Where is the virus?
Dear Editor
We are told that the virus is everywhere – in the air, in our breath, on fomites, trapped in masks - yet public health authorities seem not to be in possession of any cultivable clinical samples of the offending pathogen.
In March 2020, the World Health Organisation instructed authorities not to look for a virus but to rely instead on a genome test, the RT-PCR, which is not specific for SARS-CoV-2 (1) (2).
A Freedom of Information request to Public Health England about cultivable clinical samples or direct evidence of viral isolation has no information and refers to the proxy RT-PCR test, quoting Eurosurveillance (3).
Eurosurveillance states: “Virus detection by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) from respiratory samples is widely used to diagnose and monitor SARS-CoV-2 infection and, increasingly, to infer infectivity of an individual. However, RT-PCR does not distinguish between infectious and non-infectious virus. Propagating virus from clinical samples confirms the presence of infectious virus but is not widely available (and) requires biosafety level 3 facilities” (4).
The CDC admits that, "no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available", and used a genetically modified human lung alveolar adenocarcinoma cell culture to, “mimic clinical specimen”(5).
It appears, therefore, that we have public health bodies without clinical samples, a test which is non-specific and does not distinguish between infectivity and non-infectivity, a requirement for biosafety level 3 facilities to even look for a virus, yet we are led to believe that it is up all our noses.
So, where is the virus?
(1) https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/10665-331501
(2) https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2420/rr-5
(3) https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/679566/response/1625332/attach/ht...
(4) https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.32...
(5) https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
Competing interests: No competing interests