As the entire world is fighting the coronavirus outbreak, some of the tests that produce a surprisingly high rate of false negatives incorrectly showing a person is not infected, are worrying medical experts in the United States.
A new study that examined an Abbott Laboratories test that's used at the White House to get rapid results indicated that as many as half of positive cases could be missed out due to errors in testing.
False-negative cases create worries
The study revealed that Abbott's ID NOW machine has missed out at least one-third of the positive cases detected with a rival test. However, Abbott Laboratories soon disputed these study results, and they argued that its data showed a false-negative rate of 0.02 percent.
Another study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins revealed that most of the false-negative cases are being reported before the onset of the symptoms, which means the time when the patients get a coronavirus test soon after getting exposed to coronavirus.
The study report suggested that the false-negative rate was 100 percent when the patients were tested immediately after contracting with the virus. On the first day, after contracting with the virus, the false-negative rate became 38 percent, and it was dropped down to 20 percent after three days.
Coronavirus to continue its killing spree?
It should be noted that accurate diagnosis of coronavirus is very much essential to control the community spread of this pandemic. As false-negative cases increase drastically, medical experts believe that the number of positive COVID-19 cases could be actually more, and it will negatively impact the efforts of healthcare experts to contain the virus.
As per the latest updates, coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 2,99,382 people worldwide. In the United States alone, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 85,300 people, and the total number of positive cases has already crossed 1.4 million.
