Season 2020 ended with the anthem - Go Corona, Corona Go (Ramdas Athawale Ji). There still seems no respite from all this havoc the Wuhan Virus has created.
Salute to all the human efforts that have defied odds in these challenging times and come what may, it has been proved in 2020 that humanitarian efforts can outcast any such pandemic.
Salute and sincere gratitude to all those who have tirelessly and altruistically have helped near and dear in these crazy times.
Why I write this post? What is the significant number am I talking about?
Now that we have centers ramping up for the upcoming vaccine trials that are planned, there is a preliminary detection of Covid through an RT-PCR test (Reverse Transcription - Polymerase Chain Reaction)
In short- in the above test the detection and quantitation of the messenger RNA are done.
Having been one of the 10M recovered cases in India, yes it is scary when one contacts COVID. But there is one Significant number on the report that tells you the seriousness of the Viral infection on us, this is the Ct or Cycle Threshold value.
So what is a Ct value?
During the PCR process - a positive case detection is signified by the accumulation of a fluorescent signal.
In simple terms, there is a threshold value that is defined (by the Medical experts), the cycle at which this fluorescent signal crosses the threshold value that becomes your Ct value.
The lower the Ct value (or) the lesser cycle at which the signal crosses the threshold value it shows there is a greater amount of target nucleic acid in the sample. So the value of Ct < 29, signifies a higher viral load.
The above value of 17.09 signifies a high viral load.
Any value above 29 means moderate or having very less target nucleic acid.
Credit to the person who put up this graph! Gives a simple explanation.
The relation is inversely proportional between the Ct value and the target nucleic acid.
I hope this gives a basic understanding of the Ct value.
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