<story><title>Stanford Medicine COVID-19 test now in use</title><url>https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/stanford-medicine-COVID-19-test-now-in-use.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sebastianconcpt</author><text>&lt;i&gt;How test works&lt;p&gt;The Stanford test uses a technique called reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, to rapidly identify the presence of viral RNA in swabs from the noses of potentially infected people. RT-PCR uses short stretches of DNA called primers that bind tightly and specifically only to matching sequences in SARS-CoV-2 RNA. An enzyme called reverse transcriptase then converts the viral RNA into complementary DNA, and as the reaction continues, an enzyme called polymerase is used to generate billions of DNA copies that can be detected by fluorescently tagged molecules called probes.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Stanford Medicine COVID-19 test now in use</title><url>https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/stanford-medicine-COVID-19-test-now-in-use.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>daemonk</author><text>Looks like it&amp;#x27;s a RT-PCR. How different are their primers compared to the IDT sets (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.idtdna.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;landing&amp;#x2F;coronavirus-research-reagents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.idtdna.com&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;landing&amp;#x2F;coronavirus-research-re...&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;p&gt;There are also a couple of papers on biorxiv with primers for RT-LAMP tests, which should be much faster, easier to perform than RT-PCR. And it requires non-sophisticated equipment.&lt;p&gt;It all comes down to the false negative rates though.</text></comment>