China brings back anal covid testing ahead of Winter Olympics

PCR tests don't seem so bad anymore

China has reportedly returned to anal swabbing to detect coronavirus ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics next month. Authorities have allegedly asked more than two dozen people to submit anal swabs after a 26-year-old woman in their building tested positive for covid, reports the Beijing News. Anal swabs work in a similar fashion to PCR's, except the swab goes about two inches into your rectum instead of your throat. The swab is then tested at a lab to find trace amounts of covid in the person's excrement. The Chinese Academy of Sciences first suggested this invasive method in the early days of the pandemic when most of us were baking banana bread and watching Bridgerton. https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1484539239572606976 A research paper from the Wuhan Institute of Virology stated: "They investigated on patients in a local hospital who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and found the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in anal swabs and 75% (6/8) anal swabs were positive compared to 4/8 (50%) oral swabs that were positive in a later stage of infection, suggesting virus shedding and thereby transmission through the oral-fecal route."

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Due to the nature of the test being inherently inconvenient, the method has only been used for key groups at quarantine centres. It's not yet clear whether international athletes will need to be tested in the same way when they arrive for the Winter Olympics in just two-weeks time. https://twitter.com/ToxicEnergy11/status/1485286707578687495 Last year, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato urged China to stop anal swabbing Japanese residents in Beijing. He said: "Some Japanese reported to our embassy in China that they received anal swab tests, which caused a great psychological pain." Similarly, a US State Department spokesperson said it was "undignified" that US diplomats were forced to undergo anal swabbing. https://twitter.com/Sian338825/status/1485575104927051779 They said: "The State Department never agreed to this kind of testing and protested directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when we learned that some staff were subject to it," the spokesperson explained to Vice. "We have instructed staff to decline this test if it is asked of them, as was done in the past."

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