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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine shared takeaways from his recent COVID-19 diagnostic mixup on Sunday. During an appearance on CNN's State of the Union, the Republican state leader called his experience a "wake-up call," but emphasized differences between Ohio's dominant testing method and the type of assessment he used.
On Thursday, the governor tested positive for the novel coronavirus ahead of a scheduled meeting with President Donald Trump, which was ultimately cancelled. Hours after DeWine's office reported his test result, it issued an update that suggested the original assessment yielded a false-positive reading.
His office's follow-up statement attributed the error to antigen testing, a newer, rapid form of diagnostic evaluation for COVID-19, which carries a higher potential for inaccuracies than traditional PCR assessments.
"People should not take away from my experience that testing is not reliable or doesn't work," DeWine told CNN correspondent Dana Bash during Sunday's State of the Union interview. The governor went on to say antigen tests should be used for general "screening" purposes, instead of finite diagnostic determinations.
"The antigen tests are fairly new, and the companies that are coming out with them, quite frankly, have the burden of showing how good they are," DeWine continued. "Could they be used in some situations? Yeah, they could be. But you have to understand going in that you can get the false positives. It happened in my case. Or, you can get the false negatives."
Bash was concerned that Ohio's partnership with governors from six other states —Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia—to obtain COVID-19 tests using pooled resources would prioritize the acquisition of antigen tests. With reports of backlogs and technical issues challenging testing efficacy in several states, calls to refine diagnostic procedures have become more prevalent, especially considering the spike in regional outbreaks across the U.S. this summer.
DeWine said the multi-state coalition has not finalized its intended purchases as of Sunday.
"All we've done is, we've said, 'Let's group together...let's put our purchasing power together.' Not just potentially for antigen tests, but maybe for other things as well," the governor told Bash. "If anyone needed a wake-up call about antigens and how careful you have to be, we certainly saw that with my test. And we're going to be very careful in how we use it."
About 1.3 million PCR tests have been administered to Ohio residents throughout the outbreak, DeWine said during his State of the Union appearance. In subsequent comments to Newsweek early Sunday afternoon, a spokesperson from the governor's office reiterated that Ohio's testing "is very reliable."
"Almost all tests that have been administered in Ohio are the reliable PCR tests," the spokesperson said.
Close to 100,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Ohio since the pandemic began, according to the latest data published by its Department of Health. Its data separates statewide infections into confirmed cases, which were determined using PCR tests, and probable cases, which rely on criteria established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The health department notes that 95 percent of Ohio's virus cases were confirmed through PCR testing.
