What does the New York Times say that is not consistent with my headline? NYT wrote that 90% are false positive and you claim that the NYT piece does not support my title? I did not say that the estimates from the study and the New York Times article are identical but clearly they both show a very high degree of false positives for the tests (a majority actually ) with more than 35 amplifications.
The study in the OP states that: "
At Ct = 35, the value we used to report a positive result for PCR, <3% of cultures are positive. Our Ct value of 35, initially based on the results obtained by RT-PCR on control negative samples in our laboratory and initial results of cultures [8], is validated by the results herein presented and is in correlation with what was proposed in Korea [9] and Taiwan [10]. We could observe that subcultures, especially the first one, allow an increasing percentage of viral isolation in samples with Ct values, confirming that these high Ct values are mostly correlated with low viral loads. From our cohort, we now need to try to understand and define the duration and frequency of live virus shedding in patients on a case-by-case basis in the rare cases when the PCR is positive beyond 10 days, often at a Ct >30. In any cases, these rare cases should not impact public health decisions."