Silverstone, 2020

Single positive Covid-19 case found among over 2,800 tested by F1 in past week

2020 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by and

The FIA and Formula 1 have confirmed a single positive case of Covid-19 was identified among 2,847 tests conducted in connection with the championship in the week to yesterday.

RaceFans understands the one positive case concerned an individual not connected with the FIA, Formula 1 or the teams.

“Between Friday 14th August and Thursday 20th August, 2,847 tests for COVID-19 have been performed on drivers, teams and personnel,” confirmed F1 and the FIA in a statement. “Of these, one person tested positive.

“The lower number of tests conducted in this period compared to previous weeks reflects the fact there is a break in the race schedule following three back to back events.”

More than 20,000 tests have been conducted in a period spanning eight weeks since the championship began holding races behind closed doors. This is the fifth positive test which has been recorded.

Of the others, two positive cases were identified and isolated ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix. Sergio Perez also tested positive for Covid-19 on two separate occasions, which ruled him out of participating in the British and 70th Anniversary grands prix at Silverstone.

Don't miss anything new from RaceFans

Follow RaceFans on social media:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2020 F1 season

Browse all 2020 F1 season articles

24 comments on “Single positive Covid-19 case found among over 2,800 tested by F1 in past week”

  1. Whose private cook was it this time?

  2. If they’re PCR type tests then they’re an unreliable indicator if the person is contagious or not. This test is finding dead viral fragments in recovered patients as well as the live virus and therefore we’ve been getting a lot of false positives according to immunologists. Add that to the fact that we have a 99.9% survival rate and that currently despite the number of increased daily cases (which is directly a result of an increase in hyper testing) were not seeing an increase in COVID icu admissions or deaths.

    So nothing to worry about

    1. Please do not spread these misleading opinions.

      PCR Tests are indeed very sensitive, but in many cases nasal PCR tests after a week are negative while there still is virus in the lower lungs. If you took stool samples virus would indeed be traceable for an extended time. But this is not the typical form of a PCR test.

      So it is highly unlikely, that there are “lots of false positive” results.

      Survival rate of found cases is around 95-98% depending on the amount of tests done, with a believed mortality rate (of all infected; tested or not) of somewhere between 0.3-0.8%. This are 3 to 8 people in group of 1000. Unfortunately much deadlier than you stated.

      While true that more tests are carried out in many countries, it is also true that in most countries the positive rate has gone up as well. Implying that actually the virus is indeed spreading faster.

      Lastly, right now in many countries it is the young people who get infected in larger numbers. As can be seen in Florida and Texas (and many other countries) the virus then spreads to all age groups and then the ICU cases start to rise. It just takes a bit.

      I know this does not sound too good, but these are scientific facts. Ignoring them will not change them. But I am confident that by next summer the situation will have relaxed because of vaccines and better treatments. So then you are invited to have “nothing to worry about”

      1. Thank you Peter Muller, The gross foolishness of people who get their “knowledge” from twitter/facebook conspiracy theorists is a danger to us all. I am not trying to demonise Saad as I don’t believe him to be in charge of a countries policy, like the PM of the UK who was only converted to scientific belief by ending up in the ICU having caught the “overhyped” contagion himself. A pity a couple of presidents have not had the same experience, many lives may have been saved and the world would be able to return to near-normal much earlier.

      2. Just because there’s a lot of false negatives doesn’t mean there’s fewer or no false positives. They’re independent things. Stop invoking science as a defense for your poor arguments.

        1. I have an opinion
          22nd August 2020, 3:23

          Stop invoking science as a defense for your … arguments.

          What would be a preferrable defence? Intuition? Hearsay? Religious conviction? Innate pigheaded ignorance?

        2. Dear Daryl, A lot of false negatives ? Pray tell me more, how exactly do you identify a false negative ?
          Or for that matter a false positive when dealing with a virus that has so many different effects, from none to fatal, on so many different people.

    2. That is a bit to negative.. it depends on the quality of the used test material.

      The ‘gold standard’ RT-PCR test for COVID-19 is highly accurate and reproducible, but is costly (US$125 per test kit, and over $15,000 to set up a processing lab) and slow (4–6 hours of processing time, and a turnaround of 2–4 days, including shipping)4.

      At the other extreme, a Bangladeshi lab has reportedly developed a $3 rapid test kit that gives a result in under 15 minutes (ref. 4). But the accuracy of such point-of-care tests is questionable.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0891-7

      The most tests use by goverments ( and i hope FIA) are of excellent quality and are very reliable.

    3. were not seeing an increase in COVID icu admissions or deaths.

      So nothing to worry about

      Don’t know what world you are living in…

      1. ‘Don’t know what world you are living in…’

        I was referring to the uk and most of Europe. Lots of cases ramping up now but no deaths or icu admissions. We saw it with swine flu h1n1 tests ramping up and a huge panic aided by positive test results in the us in 2009-10 with little real impact ie very little deaths during that period. That was just before the swine flu vaccine was rolled out to the masses.

        It’s not about conspiracy theory (most of them are quite frankly idiotic) but it’s about knowing how the world and the general media works. The governments don’t need a vaccine to track us. They can already do that if they really want to. Everyone has a smartphone nowadays. And generally they don’t track anyone unless they’ve committed a crime. Then the social media history and whereabouts comes to light etc.

      2. I was of course referring to the uk and some other countries in Europe. Rise in cases but practically no deaths or icu admissions

    4. @KeithCollantine is it wise to keep this comment thread up since it holds potentially harmful false information?

      1. Yeah, I was thinking that too… Twitter, facebook, etc… It’s a comment thread on a pretty small site in comparison though.

        I post some pretty outlandish stuff here sometimes, and I’d hate to see that censored also. It’s a tough call I imagine for an independent publication that thankfully allows anyone to also comment.

  3. One found is better than it not being found and spread who knows how far.

    Finding that one case alone makes all the testing worth it, and shows how important the testing actually is. Great job to all involved!

    1. @skipgamer, Yes it keeps popping up, and every time they find one they find more undetected cases by contact tracing.

  4. It’s over, now get those daft face nappies off and bring the fans back!

    1. It’s over

      It’s not…

  5. Ferrari have a secret agreement with Covid, Mercedes are a lap ahead of Covid, RedBull and Renault have lodged protests against Covid, and Williams sold their Covid to an investor.

    1. Absolute comment of the day!

      1. I never +1 a cotd, but I would totally +1 this…

        Heads up serial +1 cotd’ers @coldfly and @hohum

        1. Covid-19 seems to hold up well without mandatory facemask changes; I doubt you’ll get @hohum‘s vote.
          @skipgamer

Comments are closed.