devoted to one of the your ascent in questions about the current virus our science correspondent garrick williamshas an answer. which cole but 19 diagnostics are most useful from an epidemiological point of view . there are basically 3 types of diagnostics that play useful but different roles in the fight against covert 19 and the 1st 2 are for determining whether someone has the disease or not the gold standard for doing that is what's called a poly res chain reaction or p.c.r. test and it works by amplifying tiny amounts of any viral genetic material available in a sample up to levels where it can be detected although no test is 100 percent reliable and p.c.r. tests are very accurate on the downside they're also slow and fairly expensive which is a drawback when numbers of cases are rising rapidly the 2nd class of detection diagnostics called antigen tests work by detecting viral proteins directly antigen tests are cheaper and they can deliver a result in minutes but they're also less accurate than p.c.r. tests which is a particular problem when it comes to what are called a false negative resu

devoted to one of the your send in questions about the current virus our science correspondent garrick williams has an answer. which colbert 19 diagnostics are most useful from an epidemiological point of view . there are basically 3 types of diagnostics that play a useful but different roles in the fight against covert 19 and the 1st 2 are for determining whether someone has the disease or not and the gold standard for doing that is what's called a polymerase chain reaction or p.c.r. test and it works by amplifying tiny amounts of any viral genetic material available in a sample up to levels where it can be detected although no test is 100 percent reliable and p.c.r. tests are very accurate on the downside they're also slow and fairly expensive which is a drawback when numbers of cases are rising rapidly the 2nd class of detection diagnostics called antigen tests work by detecting viral proteins directly antigen tests are cheaper and they can deliver a result in minutes but they're also less accurate than p.c.r. tests which is a particular problem when it comes to what are called a false negat

show devoted to one of your sent in questions about the current virus our science correspondent garrick williams has an answer. which colbert 19 diagnostics are most useful from an epidemiological point of view. there are basically 3 types of diagnostics that play useful but different roles in the fight against covert 19 and the 1st 2 are for determining whether someone has the disease or not the gold standard for doing that is what's called a poly raise chain reaction or p.c.r. test and it works by amplifying tiny amounts of any viral genetic material available in a sample up to levels where it can be detected although no test is 100 percent reliable and p.c.r. tests are very accurate on the downside they're also slow and fairly expensive which is a drawback when numbers of cases are rising rapidly the 2nd class of detection diagnostics called antigen tests work by detecting viral proteins directly antigen tests are cheaper and they can deliver a result in minutes but they're also less accurate than p.c.r. tests which is a particular problem when it comes to what are called false negative resul