I wouldn't have bet a public accusation of this magnitude on those auto-incrementing ID's. There's a possibility the earlier positive test was conducted privately and was only registered with the government at a later date when he knew it would be required for visa purposes.

It could very well be a unique ID not for the test but for the generated pdf document. 100% have done a system like this and we put the ID of the "doc" rather than the internal entity. This is also not a smoking gun in my opinion.

They claim that they got both negative and positive results yesterday, which almost has to be user error or a software bug. Even if someone at the Serbian health agency had write access and were dedicated to helping Djokovic, why would they want to change the results a week after he landed in Australia? (A bad table join could easily cause this, although I'm not sure why that wouldn't have caused larger issues in Serbian test tracking.)

Ok, this is getting strange. There are two ways to get test results:

- it's automatically sent to email (if they have it)

- you can download it from ezdravlje.rs portal

The test I shared above is the one I got on email. However, I went to portal, downloaded pdf, and now I have two copies. They're different! IDs and all the data are the same, but QR codes are different.

This is the new one: https://pcr.euprava.gov.rs/validate.php?cqcode=1641923234g3D...

Timestamp on new pdf is: 1641923234, which is GMT: Tuesday, 11. January 2022. 17:47:14

So it appears that timestamp is related to when pdf is generated, and when you download it from the portal it's generated at that point of time, i.e. there are no pdf documents sitting on government server!

So this timestamp is definitely no proof of forgery. But test ID might be - that one is still suspicious.

And one more thing, when I switch tabs with my two QR codes - page content is the same but shifted a bit. I didn't look into html/css to see what's different.

The question I have is this - is the test ID generated when the test results are generated for the first time (either sent by email if they have it, or accessed through eGov or eHealth portal), or are they generated as soon as test results are complete? If it's the former, then it's theoretically possible that the first (positive) results have been downloaded for the first time on Dec 26, and thus have a higher ID number.

Unfortunately, no data points from me, even though I have been tested MANY times due to my profession. They've got my email, so they obviously get generated immediately.

However, I do have a data point for screenshots when QR code of the positive test stated that the result was negative. This is something that happened to me as well (back in 2020, once, and never since then). It was a bug, obviously. The second part of the ID is person-specific (all my test results have that second part identical, regardless of when they were taken) - it seems that if a positive test is followed by a negative test, that happens sometimes.

Additionally, on Novak's PCR test from Dec 16th on the website, the test result "NEGATIVE" had been changed to "POSITIVE" sometime around 14h00 on January 10th. Noticed by several people, including myself (took screenshot even myself before and after).

BTW, apparently my IP address has now been blocked accessing to that website :) I get this message now: "Ваша адреса је блокирана 24 сата! Vaša adresa je blokirana 24 sata! Your address is blocked for 24 hours!"

Skipping the part where I discuss my general doubt of intellectual capabilities of the fellow commenters here.

- Datum uzorkovanja (Date of sampling): 22.12.2021 14:12:10

- Datum izdavanja rezultata (Date of issuance of results): 22.12.2021 16:15:49

=> I will ignore the time needed to get the actual swabs to the laboratory and do the necessary paperwork etc and round this to ~2 hours of time available for testing.

- Vrsta analize i proizvodjac testa (Type of analysis and test manufacturer): Real Time PCR test-SARS-CoV-2, , Sansure Biotech INC; Hunan Province

See, unless my fellow countrymen have developed a way to do PCR tests 5 times faster than the fastest tests available in the (rest) of the world, this test in itself is a joke. This is the reason PCR testing: costs, is usually indicated by symptoms already present/positive antigen test.

You're welcome.

Take care

The timestamp seems to refer to the time the test report was downloaded not when the test was conducted.

https://twitter.com/blokovi/status/1480945535620108296

Is there any reason to assume this timestamp represents the time the test was taken, rather than, say, the time the certificate was generated?

Yep, Serbo-Croatian (technically Bosnian-Montenegrian-Croatian-Serbian) "K" for "koronavirus". The only difference between languages is Latin versus Cyrillic.

Croatia, for example has its official coronavirus webpage as https://koronavirus.hr

How does that become a DoS? Spoofing ip's to get banned? Wouldn't you have to know the ip's that you wanted to get banned?

If that's a hard requirement, you should consider adding it to the guidelines because it is currently undocumented.

No centralised government conspiracy needs to be invoked here.

The corresponding QR codes in the documents still point to a negative and a positive test result in the Serbian database. The charge is that the Date of Sampling/Sample ID/Date of Results was swapped in what appears a Word document [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/zerforschung/status/1480924213309550594/...

If a government wants to falsify information on that level everything is a house of cards.

The Netherlands could make up 5000 ghost identities and issue them passports. How would passport control at JFK airport know?

The timestamp is likely when the entry was opened in the system.

Not when the test was made.

Normally that's the same.

But it's not enforced, as for example a test center which lost it's internet connection temporary is still allowed to add tests once the connection is back up.

So we don't know for sure that the test is manipulated.

We only know for sure that it was placed later in the system, not that it was made later.

Which is still very suspicious.

More that someone faked the paper certificates, imho.

Until very recently, all of those states were self-admin of the tests. This was not the case in Europe.

>States like NY, NJ, CA and others have mandatory reporting requirements, so test results get returned to the county or state DOH and are verifiable.

Those states have no rapid tests? Nobody in those states can buy a test at CVS and take it at home?

But Serbia's system seems flawed, the EU system has all the data encoded in the QR-code, including name, the date the test was performed, the sort of test (PCR or antigen), and the result, plus a digital signature to prevent changing of those fields. And the QR code is given to the person and is static. The app that checks it checks that the document hasn't been modified by verifying the digital signature. What Serbia seems to have done is to have a PDF with the timestamp, and QR code which goes to a website showing a database entry with no timestamp (except for the URL which apparently does contain a Unix timestamp, but that's not authoritive nor easily parsable by huamns).

So if I got a negative test in July and a positive one yesterday, and I want to fly somewhere, it seems I can just copy the QR code from the test in July and paste it into a Word document that says "The test was performed on January 10, 2022, and the result is available through this link: [QR code with the link to the results from July 2021]". And it seems this document doctoring (with a document with a result that allows unvaxed entry) is what Team Djokovic has done.

USA only requires that for air passengers. Requiring overseas checkin agents to be disease doctors was okay, but asking CBP to verify paperwork and stop threats at the border was too much to ask.

I think the OPs frustration and what I've heard from Canadians is that the PCR is harder to come by and Canada doesn't accept rapid tests.

Edit: Also, the cost is much higher. In Mexico I paid $25 for an antigen test. The PCR test cost $100.

Note that the USA will also accept an observed lateral flow test, not just a PCR (for air travelers).

Source: That's how I re-entered the country recently.

PCR tests can come back positive for several months post-infection, so there may be no point in testing people in that post-infection period, because it will come back with too many false positives to be useful. 180 days sounds long for that, but people do test positive for months sometimes.

The reason you can test positive for so long is that it takes time for remnant RNA from the virus to totally leave your system, and even though it's not replicating (you aren't infected or infectious), the PCR test is just detecting the RNA.

Sure, and in isolation, it's even a reasonable guideline. The issue is that combined with most of the other covid guidance, the incentives are misaligned.

The choices become

1. Follow the majority guidance, wear masks, avoid large gatherings, get vaccinated, get tested often.

In which case you will have to continue paying for testing to travel (and risk not being able to travel at the last minute)

OR...

2. Intentionally go get covid (usually by neglecting all the above guidance). Get a positive result. Avoid expensive testing, have easier travel, get easier access to gatherings.

OP might think it's funny because it appears beneficial to seek an infection despite all guidance to avoid it.

I wouldn’t call it more durable, but it can be more diverse/flexible (there’s more to covid-19 than a specific spike sequence).

But if it was more durable (long-lasting), they wouldn’t have the 180d limit. They put that limit in because of the (lowwwww) risk of continuing to test positive after recovery, but the worst case report I’ve seen is in the 6 week after recovery range.

It’s mostly Canada trying to be punitive when it comes to travelling by requiring PCR, when a within-24h antigen test would be cheap, easy, catch as many asymptomatic cases as a less-fresh PCR, and near zero-risk of false positives immediately after recovery.

Not really, they’re both down in The low double digits https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232698/omicron-largely-evade...

Please cite your supporting sources for that assertion. What I have been hearing does not support that, and even seems to be slightly the opposite (but not a lot of weight on those).

Thank you. I'd say that is very convincing, especially with him walking about on 16, 17th and 18th.

When scanning a QR code, is the date visible anywhere on the page? I am trying to guess whether someone just edited a PDF with a different date (might explain why they chose 16.12 - you need to change a single number). Alternative would require someone back dating a test in the system.

In any case, not a good look for Djokovic.