Thank you for that discussion. RT-PCR is far from perfect and those developed for SARSnCoV2 were based on the sequencing we had at the time - from China. We were lucky to get the sequencing we did because the information was provided by scientists without the permission of the CCP.  The beginning tests were not the greatest and open to manipulation - if that is where some wish to go. Over time, as we learn more, research is looking at other targets to be more specific to identifying the virus specific to COVID-19 and not other coronaviruses. With all PCR, human sequencing is accounted for in the assay and eliminated. In addition, one positive target sequence alone does not give a positive test result. All sequencing is taken into account.    This is a newly released study that shows we may be narrowing the search - which means less false positive results because of other coronaviruses. In other words, the tests are getting better and less likely to be fudged with.  The WHO recommends RdRP, E and N genes for the detection of the novel coronavirus (Corman et al., 2020a): E gene for first line screening, RdRp gene for confirmatory assay, and N gene for additional confirmatory assay. Although these genes reported as potential targets for the detection of coronavirus, we found out that only one of them (RdRP_SARSr-P2) was almost specific for the new coronavirus and the other introduced probes would detect the other types of coronaviruses. In this regard, the false-positive test results may extend for COVID-19, and many patients with mild symptoms may be infected by the other types of coronavirus. Accordingly, introducing another target such as ORF8 and designing specific primers and probes for the detection of the novel coronavirus would be useful for additional confirmatory assay. This study was conducted bioinformatically, and laboratory examinations are needed to confirm ORF8 gene as a potential target using RT-PCR, Real time PCR, or Line probe assay (Aryan et al., 2020). COVID-19 target: A specific target for novel coronavirus detection