Did the CDC Withdraw a COVID Test Because It Failed?

No.

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A post from the blog Armstrong Economics that has been widely shared on Facebook claims that the “CDC admits that COVID tests are invalid.” According to the article: “The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is finally withdrawing the PCR test for COVID for it is seriously flawed and is incapable of distinguishing between the COVID and influenza viruses.”

This is false. 

As proof for the claim, the article includes a statement from the CDC from July 2021, about “changes to CDC RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 Testing.”

This statement declares that the CDC is withdrawing a request to the FDA for emergency use authorization for one specific COVID test and said it would be retired. However, it is not evidence that the PCR test for COVID-19 is flawed. 

The CDC issued a statement in August 2021 with “clarifications about the Retirement of the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCov) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”

The statement made clear that the July 2021announcement, later cited in the viral article, meant that the CDC was retiring the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel. In the statement the CDC explained it was retiring the test“because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized hundreds of other SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests, many of which are now higher throughput or can test for more than one illness at a time. At the time CDC deployed the 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, there were no other FDA-authorized methods available within the United States.”

The CDC clarified that the July announcement did not mean that the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel failed or that it was revoked by the FDA. “There are no performance concerns with this test. The CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel is a highly accurate test. It has been used to successfully detect SARS-CoV-2 since February 2020.”

Lastly, the viral article also claims that the “CDC has finally admitted that the PCR test cannot even differentiate between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.” The CDC addressed this matter as well in its  August 2021 statement, saying that: “The CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel does not confuse influenza with SARS-CoV-2. It is a highly accurate test that detects the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 viral genetic material within a patient specimen.” The CDC also added that the test in question “was specifically designed to only detect SARS-CoV-2 viral genetic material. It does not detect influenza or differentiate between influenza and SARS-CoV-2. The presence of influenza viral genetic material within a specimen will not cause a false positive result.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Happy New Year, people are already spreading COVID misinformation… nothing’s changed.

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  2. Mwupton

    Glad to see this. Just had a coworker tell me about this yesterday, and I hadn't seen any source on it personally.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Frank Lee

    Why sure... if you believe that the written rhetoric of the CDC is indeed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and ignore the last two years of rhetorically inconsistency and shape-shifting within their self-anointed rarefied air of "scientific" superiority.

    The problem with propping up political and administrative actors with media protection... including the lack of critical challenge and censorship of any with opposing views... is that it makes the actors weak and error-prone.

    This is the mothering flaw. Mothers create mommy's babies that never grow up with enough capability to navigate the world on their own. It is time for dad to take over and start delivering some CDC tough love. That tough love would ask the question "Why, if you are so knowledgeable, right and righteous, have you completely fucked up the nation's response to the pandemic so that we have destroyed society, the economy and lives... and the virus continues to rage through the population with a now clear expectation that only natural herd immunity will result in an end to the pandemic?"

    They are canceling the test because it is flawed. They are just not directly admitting it directly, and have come up with yet another shape-shifting rhetorical string of words to deflect from the growing mountain of evidence that they have been wrong about almost everything related to the pandemic.

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    1. S Castro

      good lord, check the fda website there are dozens of authorized pcr tests. this is one specific test the cdc created, not all pcr tests.

      is this is a troll account?

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      1. Avatar photo
        Frank Lee

        https://reason.com/2022/01/03/its-covid-year-3-and-the-cdc-is-still-confused-and-confusing/?utm_medium=email

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        1. S Castro

          ?

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            Frank Lee

            That is a perfect response to illustrate my point.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Aylene Wright

    Great fact check to start the year! What I do find intriguing is why this claim is circulating right now, months after when the CDC initially announced this *particular* PCR test was being withdrawn. 🤔 I guess it makes sense as part of a narrative that "the Public Health Establishment is finally admitting that COVID is just a cold and will spread regardless of any vaccines, masks, lockdowns, etc because they realized they can't keep the hoax going any longer". (As opposed to the most recent variant likely being both more contagious and milder than prior ones, and that so many people are vaccinated and will therefore have milder disease, than if they were not.)

    But it also occurs to me that most media coverage of COVID-19 testing has referred to "PCR testing" as if there actually is only one FDA approved PCR test being used. So, I can also see why people would assume the FDA is taking that lone PCR test off the market. Here is where an overly dumbed-down approach to science reporting, can actually open the door to misinformation. Sigh.

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    1. S Castro

      the gateway pundit was circulating this recently too.

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