False Negatives Raise Doctors' Doubts About Coronavirus Tests

[RandySF]

False-negative results from coronavirus tests are becoming an increasing concern, say doctors trying to diagnose patients and get a grip on the outbreak, as a surprising number of people show up with obvious symptoms only to be told by the tests that they don’t have the disease.

While still more research is necessary to determine the true prevalence of such false-negative results, experts agree that the problem is significant. False negatives not only impede the diagnosis of disease in individual patients and an accurate understanding of the extent of its proliferation, but also risk patients who think they aren't ill further spreading the virus.

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.”

Concerns about false negatives arise from a mix of factors: quickly created tests from dozens of labs and manufacturers that haven't been extensively vetted by federal health regulators; a shortage of supplies and material for the tests that may impact results, long incubation times for the infection, and the challenge of getting an adequate sample from a patient.




https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-11/false-negative-coronavirus-test-results-raise-doctors-doubts?sref=DOTC0U32&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social

[live love laugh]

1. I think that this is by design. Lowers the count. nt

[Loki Liesmith]

4. It's not by design

[live love laugh]

5. How do you know for certain?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Your claim is EXTRAordinary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You have presented NO EVIDENCE.

Extraordinary claims with no evidence can be dismissed correctly with no evidence.

Your claim is dismissed.

[Loki Liesmith]

18. Hey I wasn't the one advocating a conspiracy theory.

Last edited Sun Apr 19, 2020, 01:24 PM - Edit history (1)

It’s not on me to demonstrate anything.

But I’ll humor you. These tests are made by companies that want to make money. They design them to work. If they don’t work they don’t make money or they lose money.
If they aren’t working as well as they could be it’s not by design. It’s because they don’t understand the virus well enough yet or because they are rushing due to pressure.

[live love laugh]

25. The companies make $$$ either way--especially

under extraordinary circumstances with temporarily high demand. They sell in large quantities and there’s very little time to validate their accuracy. The buyers are just SOL.

Furthermore there have not been any reported testing “errors” of this magnitude prior to the pandemic.

There are all kinds of snake oil sales companies trying to make $$$ off the pandemic. What’s to prevent test companies from doing the same?

Trump/Kushner have business interests in testing via Kushner’s brother. Trump’s withheld testing to artificially decrease the count. What better way to achieve a decreased count than faulty tests?

[gab13by13]

11. I do agree that Trump does not want to test,

but these bad tests are the result of incompetence. If we wanted to look for a real theory, let's check the companies who are making the test kits. Are they coming from the same company that rushed them?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Broken strategy to attribute malfesance when it is adequately explained by incompetence. . . . nt

[lostnfound]

20. Curious,question, do you see malfeasance in trumps handling of masks / respirators?

In confiscating masks ordered by states and countries, sourcing masks from nearly bankrupt middlemen with no employees?

Outbidding for purchases but not taking responsibility to distribute them?

Or is that just incompetence too?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. In issues you just pointed to, yes, I think malfeasance explains those better than incompetence

Partly due to the extraordinary anti-social nature of those acts, incompetence does not adequately explain it.

[live love laugh]

26. But incompetence TOTALLY explains bad tests? nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. Yes. You have only a supposition. A supposition is not evidence & your claim is extraordinary

You've had ample opportunity.

You have no evidence.

Claim dismissed.

[ck4829]

21. You know... I'm just not sure at this point anymore...

[sop]

2. Tests produced by "dozens of labs and manufacturers that haven't been extensively vetted

by federal health regulators." I suspect some providers are just out to make a quick buck.

[spinbaby]

3. This has been an issue all along

As I recall, that doctor in China who raised the alarm and then died from the disease, tested negative until right before he died.

[uponit7771]

6. +1,

[Cha]

28. Really? wow.. thanks for that information, spinbaby.

[TexasProgresive]

7. I just read a couple of docs from the W.H.O.

I think the problem with false negatives and positives is caused by the the rush to develop tests in house by multiple labs. There is a concern about point of use tests that give fast results not being properly vetted. Why we didn't use the W.H.O. test is the question we should ask.

[TheRickles]

8. Yes, false positives can be just as significant

Validated tests should have known rates of false negatives and false positives. So far, the Covid tests have neither, rendering them highly suspect.

[gab13by13]

12. If these false negatives

aren't coming from faulty test kits then we are all in for a much bigger problem.

[TheRickles]

19. It's not known how sensitive and specific these tests are.

I haven't seen any data saying how sensitive they are (rate of false negatives, true infection that was not detected by tests) and how specific they are (generating a positive result even when the patient isn't infected). So it's hard to make any firm conclusions without knowing how reliable the tests are, unfortunately. So yes, it could be a very big problem.

[diverdownjt]

16. Texasprogressive....

Why use the WHO test when we can delay testing until my friends can profit
from your death?

[Varaddem]

24. +1

[greymattermom]

13. They should use lung ct scans.

The appearance of the lungs can also be diagnostic.

[gab13by13]

15. Yes they are accurate,

but we need to give at least 3 million tests a day.

[gab13by13]

14. This is why a competent federal government

needs to be in charge of a national emergency. States are left to their own devices to try to buy products that the federal government should be providing.

[Danascot]

17. The COVID-19 test may give false-negative results more than 30% of the time.

Even if you test negative for COVID-19, assume you have it, experts say.

No diagnostic test is 100% accurate, but experts have still expressed concern at the accuracy of the COVID-19 tests.

Conventional diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus may give false-negative results about 30% of the time, meaning people with an active COVID-19 infection still test negative for the disease, according to news reports.

"Unfortunately, we have very little public data on the false-negative rate for these tests in clinical practice," Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University and director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times. However, preliminary research from China suggests that the most common type of COVID-19 test, known as a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, may give false-negative results about 30% of the time.

The Chinese research has not yet been peer-reviewed, but anecdotally, Krumholz's colleagues have expressed concern that the false-negative rate may be even higher in the U.S., he wrote: "A lot of my patients who have symptoms, who I clinically think have COVID-19, are testing negative," Dr. Alain Chaoui, head of Congenial Healthcare, a practice with 50,000 patients across five locations in Massachusetts, told The Boston Globe.

https://www.livescience.com/covid19-coronavirus-tests-false-negatives.html

[LAS14]

22. Does this problem occur in Europe? In places that used the WHO test?

Do we have a situation here where a problem was noticed much earlier, when we could have started using a different test? My daughter-in-law is an ICU physician and she knew three weeks ago that there was a 30 to 40% chance of a false negative.

[marlakay]

29. My neighbor 3 houses down in court

Had pneumonia and his wife got really sick too, his test was negative. He told us standing in front of his house while we were out walking. They are young early 40’s normally healthy and sick for few weeks then better.

I wondered if it was a false negative, will never know. They are both school teachers.