Trump still confident in virus test despite false negatives
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump expressed no concerns Friday about a rapid coronavirus test that the White House has been relying on to ensure his safety, despite new data suggesting the test may return an inordinate share of false negatives.
Trump expressed his confidence in the test from Abbott Laboratories after a preliminary study by New York University researchers reported problems with it. Trump and his deputies have promoted the 15-minute test as a “game changer” and have been using it for weeks now to try to keep the White House complex safe.
The Food and Drug Administration announced late Thursday it was investigating preliminary data suggesting the Abbott test can miss a large number of COVID-19 cases, falsely clearing infected patients.
“Abbott is a great test; it’s a very quick test,” Trump said at a Rose
Garden event to highlight his administration’s efforts to develop a vaccine for the virus. “And it can always be very rapidly double-checked.”
The rapid swab is used daily at the White House to test Trump, key members of his staff as well as any visitor to the White House complex who comes in close proximity to the president or Vice President Mike Pence. The tests were also used to justify most White House staffers’ decisions not to wear masks until they were ordered to do so earlier this week.
“We’ve got to get to the bottom of it, but we still have confidence in the test or we wouldn’t have it on the market,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox Business Network.
White House officials on Friday continued using the Abbott ID Now test. Reporters at the White House underwent the test before Trump’s Rose Garden event. The president noted that the administration officials and staff around him, not all of whom were wearing masks, also had undergone testing Friday.
Trump, who also did not wear a mask, was asked why not everyone was wearing a face covering.
“I’ve been tested, we’ve all been tested and we’re quite a distance away, and we’re outdoors,” said Trump. “I told them I gave them the option they can wear it or not.”
Azar described the FDA warning as a routine announcement that comes after medical manufacturers submit any type of negative information about their product.
Trump has praised the Abbott test as “very quick, very good” and alluded to the tests helping keep him safe. The coronavirus test was quickly brought to market in late March, just weeks after Trump effectively called on the nation to lock down to try to slow the spread of the virus. At the time, the test received governmental approval, FDA commissioner Steve Hahn noted “normally these tests take months to develop.”
On Friday, Hahn said that if a person is suspected of having the disease caused by the coronavirus, “it might be worth, if the test is negative, getting a second confirmatory test. That’s what our guidance is about.”
Hahn, asked on CBS on Friday whether he’d continue to recommend using the test at the White House, said, “That will be a White House decision.” But he said the test is on the market and the FDA continues to “recommend its use or to have it available for use.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she had discussed the issue with Hahn and suggested some of the high false negative results may have been the result of “user error.”
Still, she said, “They take any indication of false negatives very seriously,” adding that anyone who tests negative but still presents symptoms should consider being tested again.
McEnany also cited the president’s daily test as a reason he chooses not to wear a mask.
Federal health officials have been alerting doctors to the potential inaccuracy in the test, which is used at thousands of hospitals, clinics and testing sites.