This means that a person can test positive but not really have the virus. And what that means is they can incur $1000s of dollars of unnecessary medical expenses.
EDIT: The rumors say all these test kits came from China. Now WHO says no to using hydroxychloroquine as a cure.
Other rumors say one coronavirus test has a 30% false negative rate. That means that about 30% of the people who test as negative actually have the coronavirus and can spread it around.
I’m trying to find more details about this from a reliable source.
Stories
2020-02-11. Chinese test kits only 30-50% accurate. “The accuracy rate of the test is only 30 to 50 per cent, said Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, during a CCTV interview on Wednesday.” https://www.scmp.com/tech/science-research/article/3049858/race-diagnose-treat-coronavirus-patients-constrained-shortage
Info on the CDC test
From “US CDC Real-Time Rt-PCR Panel for Detection 2019-Novel Coronavirus” dated Jan 28, 2020. PDF: https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
- A false negative result may occur if a specimen is improperly collected, transported or handled. False negative results may also occur if amplification inhibitors are present in the specimen or if inadequate numbers of organisms are present in the specimen.
- Positive and negative predictive values are highly dependent on prevalence. False negative test results are more likely when prevalence of disease is high. False positive test results are more likely when prevalence is moderate to low.
- Do not use reagents past the expiration date.
- The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection.
- The performance of this test has not been established for screening of blood or blood products for the presence of 2019-nCoV.
- PDF page 37: accuracy of the test. See Table 4, “Limit of detection”.
Chinese test
Looks to be in a Chinese language. Note: the language is not called “Chinese”, there are many dialects in China, the top 2 are: Mandarin and Cantonese.
