This rings true, based on our own family's experience
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False negative Kung Flu tests aren’t helping
The coronavirus is so new that there are still many things we don't understand or can't explain about it. The biggest question is whether people who've been cured of the virus can get it again. Without knowing that, it will be very difficult to create an effective vaccine.
There are many questions that will be necessary to answer before we can expect to live reasonably normal lives again, and chief among them is how effective the current tests are to determine who has the disease.
The current drive to find a test that will give a result in the shortest time possible obscures the real problem: researchers are reporting far too many false positives and false negatives. Without accurate testing, we'll be unable to track the virus and won't be able to respond until an outbreak is out of control.
Some doctors described situations in which patients show up with clear symptoms such as a cough and fever, test negative, and then test positive later on. It’s a particular issue in New York, where the disease has likely infected far more than the 174,000 people confirmed through limited testing. At Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, doctor Jeremy Sperling says so-called false-negative tests are now a frequent occurrence in the emergency room.
“If a patient presents with classic Covid symptoms, but tests negative, they’ve still got Covid,” said Sperling, who is the chair of emergency medicine at the hospital. “There is just nothing else it could be in New York City in 2020.”
My daughter Kate’s doctor reached the same conclusion. Kate returned to Portland Oregon from Hawaii and within a few days developed all the symptoms of Covid. Her doctor tested her twice, with negative tests, but also got negative results from every other flu variation she tested for. Her conclusion: “you’ve got Covid”. In the meantime, Kate’s symptoms got worse with each day. Twice, her lungs hurt so much and her breathing became so difficult that she almost called an ambulance, but held off.
In any event, after three weeks she’s finally on the mend and has been symptom-free for four days. “Officially” her diagnosis was viral pneumonia, but she’s almost certainly an unrecorded case of the virus. Either way, Kate sys she wouldn’t wish whatever she had on her worst enemy.
