Assessment of the error involved in the PCR tests

PCR tests are the diagnostic method that is accepted as the gold standard in the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease. There are many different kits with differences such as targeted gene regions and kit content used in performing these tests around the world. There are many factors that affect the accuracy of PCR test results. In general, some of these may be caused by the suspected patient, the laboratory environment, the specialist, or the diagnostic kit used. These factors cause false positive and false negative results to occur. In this study, data from thirty-one articles related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method used in the diagnosis of SARS-COV-2 were used. In total, approximately 188,201 disease test data were obtained. Of these tests, 1472 were identified as discordant test results (false positive/false negative). Of these results, 1025 were accepted as false negative and 447 as false positive. The approximate false positive rate (FPR) calculated according to these data is 0.56%, and the false negative rate (FNR) is 0.95%. This study was carried out by making calculations and researches on approximate data in order to obtain a general result. As a result of the research, it is thought that false positive results are caused by pipetting errors, contamination and false negative results are caused by improper sampling and sampling in the early stages of the disease.