Is there a test for the Covid “Delta” Variant?

The short answer is, “No.”

There is no test available for the Delta Variant.

So how do we know people are getting it?  Read on. The highly hyped spread of this dangerous “variant” is suspicious.

This is from Health.com

So, is there a test for the Delta Variant?

This is where things get a little tricky. Technically, there is a test for the Delta variant—but it’s not something you or your doctor has access to. “There is no commercial test for the Delta variant,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells Health. Instead, what happens is that a “selected sample” of positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are “further studied to look for the characteristic mutations of the Delta variant,” Dr. Adalja explains.

“This sequencing is only done at specialty labs,” Thomas Russo, MD, professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York, tells Health.

Basically, there’s a small chance that your positive COVID-19 test could be sent off to the CDC for genomic sequencing, but you wouldn’t know or find out about it anyway.

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Brian Sussman

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