Posts Baselessly Link COVID-19 Tests to Vaccine Conspiracy Theory
SciCheck Digest
The COVID-19 vaccines currently in use must be administered via injection. But Instagram posts baselessly suggest that Bill Gates and George Soros will use COVID-19 tests to secretly vaccinate people who haven’t yet received the shots. There is no evidence for that conspiracy theory, and scientists say trying to administer a vaccine with a swab would likely not be effective.
Tests that detect current infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are known as viral tests. There are two types: a Nucleic Acid Amplification Test, or NAAT, and an antigen test. Many of the NAATs use a molecular biology technique known as the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, to detect even a very tiny amount of the virus in a specimen. The PCR test takes advantage of some natural features of biology to essentially scan through all of the RNA present in a sample — such as a nasal swab — and search for the presence of coronavirus RNA. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention NAATs “are unlikely to return a false-negative result saliva tests aren’t as optimal as those using swabs of the nose or nasopharynx (upper throat behind the nose).
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