Stability issues of RT-PCR testing of SARS-CoV-2 for hospitalized patients clinically diagnosed with COVID-19

“Abstract: In this study, we collected a total of 610 hospitalized patients from Wuhan between February 2, 2020, and February 17, 2020. We reported a potentially high false negative rate of real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing for SARS-CoV-2 in the 610 hospitalized patients clinically diagnosed with COVID-19 during the 2019 outbreak. We also found that the RT-PCR results from several tests at different points were variable from the same patients during the course of diagnosis and treatment of these patients…”