Positive Coca Cola at Covid-19? The (altered) test of the Austrian politician

An alarm comes from Austria: Coca Cola is positive for Covid-19. This, at least, is what emerges from an “experiment” conducted by the Austrian parliamentarian Michael Schnedlitz, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party. The politician’s goal was to demonstrate the unreliability of rapid anti-Covid tests, used in drive-in and analysis laboratories all over the world to have an immediate (or almost) response on the positivity or negativity of possible infected.

The Coronavirus positive Coca Cola test: how it went

The Austrian ultra-right party politician conducted a test that was as simple as it was (conceptually) incorrect. During a parliamentary debate, Michael Schnedlitz took a glass of Coca Cola, a lancing device serological test and a small swab. He then soaked the swab in Coke and poured a few drops of the drink into the test.

After a few moments, the test began to stain, as if the drops of liquid poured into it contained SARS-CoV-2 bacilli. More than enough proof, for the Austrian politician, that rapid anti-Covid tests are completely unreliable. If Coca Cola is enough to get a false positive, who assures us – the Austrian politician wonders – that the same does not happen every day in drive-ins and in analysis laboratories, thus inflating the statistics of the daily infected. ?

Because the Coca Cola test is unreliable

Too bad, however, that with his apparently harmless action, the parliamentarian of the “Austrian Freedom Party” has actually tampered with the test. As is known, in fact, the lancing device serological test looks for any antibodies produced by our immune system in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. In case of positivity, the reagents inside the fast buffer release a dye.

Using Coca Cola to verify the reliability of the lancing device, Michael Schnedlitz simply poured some dye (E151, the brilliant black used in the fizzy drink recipe) into the test, altering the result. The positivity to the new Coronavirus, therefore, was not “caused” by some antibody present in the liquid: it is the Coca Cola dye that “dyed” the strips, artificially creating a false positive.

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