“I think what people should not take from my experience (is) that testing is unreliable or not working,” DeWine, a Republican, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
DeWine said the antigen test he took last Thursday yielded the false positive “should be seen as a screening test” and that the PCR test, which he said took more than 1,300,000 Ohioans, “is very, very, very reliable. ”
“The antigen tests are pretty new. And the companies that come out with them, honestly, have the burden of pointing out, you know, how good they are,” he said. “Could they be used in some situations? Yes, they can be, but you have to understand that you can get the false positives, as happened in my case, or you can get the false negatives.”
“The test results today follow the negative PCR test results for the governor and the first lady on Thursday. The PCR tests taken on Thursday were negative for the governor, the first lady, and the staff, and were twice on lab machines. executed with results in negative both times, “DeWine said in a statement Saturday.
The false positive result came from an antigen test that DeWine took as part of the test protocol that was set up to greet the president, who traveled to Ohio on Thursday, the statement said.
CNN reported in April that so far antigen tests for coronavirus have not been working consistently. Based on similar antigen tests for respiratory diseases such as the flu, their sensitivity – the ability to correctly identify patients with Covid-19 – varies between 34% and 80%, according to the World Health Organization.
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