SAN CARLOS, Calif. (KGO) -- The rollout of COVID-19 testing is accelerating as more kits become available. However, a leading pathologist who was director of virology at Stanford, points out that the results are not 100% accurate.
"It's not that these tests can't detect virus," said Dr. Bruce Patterson. "My concern is that the sampling involved in detecting the virus can lead to clinical false negatives."
Patterson says he expects the rate of false negatives to be 10 to 15% in line with testing for other viruses, including seasonal flu.
"Are they positive when you have the disease or are they positive or negative when you don't have the disease?" Dr. Patterson asked. "Those are the clinical performance metrics that physicians rely on with every test that we do."
2020-03-27 12:30:59uni2019
temp not rising! Yeah!
COVID-19 testing is important but has 10 to 15% rate of producing false, negative results, pathologist says
Thursday, March 26, 2020 5:45PM