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A Facebook post featuring a meme with an image of Albert Einstein says that “people are being diagnosed with Delta variant even though there is no Delta variant test”.

This isn’t quite right. Although there are no direct Delta variant tests, PCR tests that are positive for SARS-CoV-2 can undergo genetic analysis such as ‘genomic sequencing’ which tells us if it is the Delta (or another) variant. This means it is possible to accurately identify if someone is unwell with the Delta variant of Covid-19.

https://fullfact.org/health/delta-variant-tests/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/25/magazine/genome-sequencing-covid-variants.html

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-01-22/covid-19-coronavirus-genomic-tracing-sequencing-transmission-dna/13074682

Death Star