> Is the band matching the specific SARS-CoV-2 or it's just recognizing any coronavirus in circulation? AFAIK coronaviruses aren't that rare and are present in humans every year.
I've heard a podcast (in German) [0] with Christian Drosten who is one of the co-authors of the pt-pcr paper [1]. The relevant excerpt from the transcript (deepl translated):
> A very, very large validation study has been conducted. I would have to open it on my computer to go back to the numbers. But we have large numbers of real patient samples - with known positive evidence of other corona viruses and all the other cold viruses that we know of, and a whole number of these for each individual virus - and a whole number of patient samples, that is hundreds of samples with other corona viruses and other cold viruses, have been tested in this test. And not once has there been a false positive reaction. So this test does not react against any other human coronavirus or any other human cold virus.
> It is true, but this is of course completely misleading information, in theory this test would react against the old SARS corona virus. But that has not been present in humans for 16 years. And in theory, this test would also react against a whole range of bat coronaviruses, but they do not exist in humans either.
I've heard a podcast (in German) [0] with Christian Drosten who is one of the co-authors of the pt-pcr paper [1]. The relevant excerpt from the transcript (deepl translated):
> A very, very large validation study has been conducted. I would have to open it on my computer to go back to the numbers. But we have large numbers of real patient samples - with known positive evidence of other corona viruses and all the other cold viruses that we know of, and a whole number of these for each individual virus - and a whole number of patient samples, that is hundreds of samples with other corona viruses and other cold viruses, have been tested in this test. And not once has there been a false positive reaction. So this test does not react against any other human coronavirus or any other human cold virus.
> It is true, but this is of course completely misleading information, in theory this test would react against the old SARS corona virus. But that has not been present in humans for 16 years. And in theory, this test would also react against a whole range of bat coronaviruses, but they do not exist in humans either.
[0]: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/16-Coronavirus-Update-Wi...
[1]: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...