Elon Musk says he tested positive and negative for COVID-19

Elon Musk took to Twitter Thursday night to say he had received mixed results after being tested for COVID-19 and currently experiencing symptoms of a cold. Musk says he’s been tested four times using a rapid antigen test: two tests came back positive and two came back negative. It is also while waiting for the results from two PCR tests but the results will not be known for 24 hours.

Antigen tests work by detecting a small protein on the surface of the coronavirus, while PCR tests look for the virus itself. Antigen testing can be done quickly because it does not require a laboratory and is often administered in hot spots like college campuses or senior care facilities. Some states don’t even bother to report antigen test results in their overall number of cases, according to a survey released in September by Kaiser Health News (KHN).

In addition to saying “something extremely wrong is going on,” Musk suggests that his experience is likely shared by others and contributing to peak current in cases seen in the United States and abroad. He also replied “exactly“To a tweet saying” Test revenue probably isn’t fake. ”

Musk has sown the seeds of doubt, confusion and at times outright misinformation about the coronavirus. He accused doctors of inflating the number of cases for financial reasons, promoted a widely discredited article on the benefits of chloroquine, called the shelter-in-place orders “fascist”, and dismissed the panic associated with the pandemic as “stupid. In March, he said: “almost zero new cases“End of April.

The United States is currently seeing another spike in COVID-19 cases. Barely a week after reporting 100,000 cases in a single day, public health officials recorded a record 160,000 new cases on Thursday, according to the New York Times. Hospitalizations for COVID-19 also set a record 67,096 on the same day, according to the Covid Tracking Project, with deaths rising to more than 1,000 on average each day.