Some children have found a devious method to get out of school – using soft drinks to create false positive Covid tests. An article in BBC explains how does it work.
Bizarre testing
While the world is taking all the possible precautions to stay far away from the coronavirus as much as possible, some school-going children in the United Kingdom have found a bizarre way to generate fake ‘positive‘ results in a COVID-19 lateral flow test by pouring few drops of orange juice in it.
The trend, which is gaining a lot of attention and raising concern, become popular after TikTok videos showing the same went viral.
Fake positive results
Pupils pour a few drops of orange juice or lemon juice in order to obtain a fake positive coronavirus result by using a lateral flow test.
Several other edible items including soft drinks, tomato ketchup among others can also be used to generate the fake result.
The outcome of the test is confirmed to be positive on a lateral flow test if two lines appear in the strip otherwise the sample is negative.
Acidity and coronavirus
The worrying question now arises is that whether the fruit juices contain coronavirus? Several reports suggest that it is not the case.
An experiment by Guardian says that that the fake positive coronavirus test result “appears to be linked to its acidity, which essentially breaks the test.” So the acid level in the fluid is likely the cause of the double lines on the lateral flow test, rather than coronavirus.
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Source: BBC
