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How many COVID test results could be false positives?

2020-08-08 | 🔗
Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel weighs in.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Emily, thank you so much Griff all right. Coronavirus testing is facing scrutiny after Ohio Governor MIKE Dewine tested positive for the virus, despite show nothing symptoms only to test negative just hours later, so how common are false? Positive tests here to break it down is Fox news. Medical contributor, Dr Marc Siegel, doctor, welcome, and thank you for joining us today. So what are your thoughts on that? Just how common are these false positives, Emily its more common than people realize, and I want to walk you through it? First of all, it depends on something called pretest probability. Where are you are new, an area where there is a lot of covid 19 or an area where there is very little? If you are in an area where there is very little, then you believe in negative much more often, if you are in a hot spot and there is a lots of it, then a positive is more accurate. Secondly, what kind of test are you doing, because Governor Dewine was doing
Anna Toedoingant again test? I love those test because they are rapid and quick and test a lot of people on them. They are very similar to what we do with the flu test, but they are less accurate than the test, the gold standard we have been using since March, where we look for Gwinnett particular material. That is the one that takes longer to get back in most cases. His first test was the protein ant again test when they got a false positive. They went ahead and did the more accurate, Gwinnett particular test. It all depends on the test. You get the answer here and message for the public. You cant say that the test is one hundred percent, accurate in any case, Emily so doctor quickly. Does that mean that people should be seeking out pcr tests and requesting those so that they can be one and done rather than worrying if they got that more
Vegas testvaguetest false positi thats a great question, it depends on what your likelihood is. I, like Anti General, take a quick look. Maybe have you it. The other is more extensive, look, maybe confirmatory test. I like the antigen overall, better Emily. Thank you in last sixty seconds. I want to ask you about supplies. Initial supplies of any successful coronavirus vaccines are now expected to fall short. What are your thoughts on the vaccine or those ancillary supplies on that? I want to get under that headline a little Emily. We are hearing that whatever company emerges, we are going to get one hundred million doses right away. We may want three hundred million doses couple of points. One, not everybody is going to take this right away. I talked to the surgeon surgeon about this
care about this vaccine surgeon general, Dr Adams. We have to convince people to take the vaccine and high risk groups first to say our healthcare workers, elderly those obese, those at high risk socioeconomically disadvantaged. We have got to get the vaccine into the areas where its needed the most, where people are at most risk of high risk symptoms, starting with healthcare workers. I think we can do this and I have think we are going to have enough vaccine Emily and when you say we, when you say that we should show we care, do you mean the average American? Do you mean voters? Do you mean leadership in Congress? Who is that we thats another great question: how about our politicians, how about they be consistent? How about the messaging be consistent and public health officials out there be consistent the way Dr Adams is by the way the Department of Defense is going to be involved in this. They will play an enormous role in getting this out there and reassuring people along with the centers for disease control. We need a consistent message from leadership and from public.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-08.