Health experts think upward of 30% of patients infected with the coronavirus are receiving negative test results.
“The whole testing field is in flux,” Bill Miller, a physician and epidemiologist at the Ohio State University, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “The thing that is different this time is most of these tests are going through a really rapid validation process. As a result, we can’t be completely confident in how they will perform.”
Mike Lozano, a Florida-based executive for Envision Healthcare Corp., said that he believes the currently available coronavirus tests are likely only accurate about 70% of the time.
Chris Smalley, a Kentucky-based doctor, said the 70% estimate is becoming a popular guess by doctors as to how accurate the coronavirus tests are. He added that he has seen several patients test negative while still showing symptoms of the coronavirus and needing extended hospital stays.
“A false negative is problematic because it tells the patient they don’t have the virus,” Craig Deligdish, a Florida oncologist, said.
A study in February of 1,000 patients in China found that only 60% of patients tested positive for the coronavirus, despite 90% of the patients having the symptoms of the virus. The lab tests used in the study are similar to those being used in the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement Monday that the agency needs to balance speed and accuracy when it came to testing but added that it would continue to emphasize the need for more tests.
So far, there have been nearly a quarter-million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins. More than 5,300 people have died from it, while over 8,8,00 have recovered.
