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[[Z: A positive PCR should be followed by a viral culture test to see if you're dealing with a live infection]]

After a positive PCR test, you don't know if the virus is alive or not. To find this out you can add it to respiratory cells (in the case of a respiratory virus) and see if they start producing virus particles).

[[Z: Viral culture tests are rarely used in clinical practice]]

Positive diagnoses of COVID-19 are done base on PCR only.

Surkova, E., Nikolayevsskyy, V., Drobniewski, F. (2020). False-positive COVID-19 results: hidden problems and costs. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30453-7