Was declaring PCR positives using single genes the rule and not the exception?

A holiday tale from a friend

A friend of mine took a PCR test after arriving home from holiday abroad on 5th October 2021. At that time the government required a PCR test be undertaken upon returning and if you were positive you had to quarantine for 10 days.

This is his PCR test result from Randox Laboratories, using their PCR test, launched on 26 January 2020. He was found to be positive for the coronavirus.

You will notice that two genes were tested: the “ORF1ab-gene” and “E-gene”, and one of the genes was positive, with a CT value of 33.57. The E-gene result was undetermined.

Seven months before, in March 2021, we exposed that the UK lighthouse laboratories breached WHO EUA and violated manufacturer instructions for use because they were calling positives on single genes rather the ‘two from three’ genes’ required by the WHO. This was being done throughout winter 2020/21 in the UK clearly creating a ‘casedemic’. See here for details.

Not only did the Randox PCR only test for two genes but, as with the UK lighthouse laboratories, it declared a positive on one only, thus also breaching WHO guidelines. Either that or an indeterminate result on the other gene was judged to be equivalent to a positive (just to be safe?).

In their defence at least Randox were open enough to acknowledge in their test was useless (this statement remains on their website):

Out of curiosity my friend then dutifully self-monitored the progress of his ‘illness’, using LFTs, for 10 days from the 5th October to end of his self imposed quarantine on the 15th October. The LFT results were all negative as shown here:

Clearly, he was not infected with SARS-CoV-2.

What this proves is that single gene testing was common practice not only within the NHS lighthouse laboratories but also in private laboratories and this went on throughout 2020 and late into 2021.

Obviously one motive was to maintain the perception of a pandemic. My friend also suspects another motive was at play. At the time he was single-shot-vaccinated and had refused all other offers of the second and subsequent or booster vaccines. Hence, he was unvaccinated (or even ant-vaxx?) in official eyes. A quick check of his NHS record would reveal this status.

His suspicion is that his positive result and the application of a single gene test was intentionally set as a lower bar to ensure that the unvaccinated were more likely to be labelled as infected than those vaccinated. This covid positive status would then act as means to punish the unvaccinated (quarantine and loss of earnings etc) and would help boost the casedemic numbers.

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As an aside it is worth noting that at that time a positive PCR test required voluntary self-isolation upon returning from abroad. However, there was no explicit mention in government guidelines about what to do if the PCR test result was ‘unclear’ or indeterminate. Commercial testing companies advised people to retest or quarantine but this differed from government guidelines, and they were in essence advising people to follow policies that did not exist.

So, the smart thing to do to avoid quarantine was to simply run your PCR test swab under the tap and then submit that in the hope of an unclear result (or simply ignore the nonsense altogether).

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