DeWine: Flawed result shouldn’t undercut testing
“If anyone needed a wake-up call with antigens, … we certainly saw that with my test.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who last week tested positive for the coronavirus, then negative and then negative again, said on CNN on Sunday that his roller coaster ride shouldn’t be reason for people to think “that testing is not reliable or doesn’t work.”
His first test result was a positive, when he was screened with a rapid testing method Thursday before President Donald Trump arrived in Ohio for campaign appearances.
The Republican governor was given an antigen test made by Quidel, one of two companies that have received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for coronavirus antigen tests.
These tests, while fast and convenient, are known to be less accurate than PCR tests, which were used to retest DeWine twice Thursday and once more Saturday.
All three PCR tests turned up negative, confirming that DeWine wasn’t infected with the virus.
“I don’t think that DeWine’s results were surprising, per se,” said Andrea Prinzi, a clinical microbiologist and diagnostics researcher at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Colorado. “We know that the performance of antigen testing is not as accurate as PCR testing.”
The Ohio governor’s experience, however, could raise concerns about how much states will rely on antigen tests as they seek to augment the forms of testing, such as PCR, that are in short supply or that are mired in laboratory backlogs, unable to generate results in a timely fashion to help assess caseloads and dole out treatments.
DeWine is one of seven governors who announced last week that they were banding together to buy 3.5 million rapid coronavirus tests, including antigen tests, to ramp up production.
Daniel Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, noted in an email that the states involved were eyeing “multiple companies and multiple testing types.”
On Sunday, DeWine said he already had been in touch with Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland to talk about the states’ agreement to use their collective “purchasing power” for testing and other supplies.
“If anyone needed a wake-up call with antigens, how careful you have to be, we certainly saw that with my test,” DeWine said. “And we’re going to be very careful in how we use it.”