{"doi":"10.1093/cid/ciaa619","title":"To Interpret the SARS-CoV-2 Test, Consider the Cycle Threshold Value","abstract":"To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), it is important to identify and isolate people who are infectious. It is especially important to ensure that those with a high viral load are isolated and not able to transmit to others. Currently, diagnosis, screening, and surveillance depend on a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reverse transcriptasequantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test, and results are generally reported to the ordering physician as positive or negative. However, the test does provide a measure of the viral load in the sample, in what is called the cycle threshold (Ct) value. We suggest that reporting this Ct value, or a calculated viral load, can aid in interpretation and clinical decisions. We discuss the merits of PCR tests and other approaches, such as time-since-symptomresolution-based approaches for removing individuals from isolation.","journal":"Clinical Infectious Diseases","year":2020,"id":48457,"datarank":0.9038798960737973,"base_score":6.025865973825314,"endowment":6.025865973825314,"self_citation_contribution":0.9038798960737973,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.9038798960737973,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":413,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9622,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":87622,"name":"Michael J. Mina","orcid":"0000-0002-0674-5762","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228911,"name":"Michael R. Tom","orcid":"0000-0002-8748-4612","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":10,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T20:34:12.647743Z","pmid":"32435816","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}