About 15% of tests performed by the Abbott ID Now rapid coronavirus testing machine return false negatives, according to the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Francis Collins told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that although the system can provide results in just about 15 minutes, it isn’t as sensitive as other testing methods, according to CNN. He said that the machine has “about a 15% false negative rate.”
“If you’re in a circumstance where you really, really don’t want to miss a diagnosis of somebody who’s already carrying the virus, you’d like to have something that has a higher sensitivity than that. And I know they’re working on how to make that happen,” Collins said. “It’s certainly one of the most exciting things we’ve got right now, but we think we could even do better.”
A spokesman for Abbott said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that the company believes Collins was referencing a study done early on that involved testing what is called “viral transport media,” which can make the tests less accurate than when the direct swab method is used. He said that subsequent testing has shown a much higher level of accuracy.
“Most recently the city of Detroit conducted a study and found that the rapid test had 98% accuracy in compared to a molecular lab test,” the spokesman said.
Collins said that there are about 18,000 of the machines performing tests right now. He added that a device that could test for both COVID-19 and its antibodies would be a major step.
“I would say if we have a new technology that would give a twofer where you could get both a virus test and an antibody test at the same time for a really good price — that might be something we’d be pretty interested in,” the director told the committee.
As of Thursday, the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 1.2 million people in the United States and killed almost 75,000 people.
