If you have coronavirus symptoms, assume you have it, even if you test negative
You had some exposures that may put you at risk for coronavirus. A few days later you come down with a bad cough yourself and feel a little short of breath and really tired. You take your temperature: 101 degrees. A fever.
A couple of days later, still with fevers, you go back, and the doctors relent and test you for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They again stick something up your nose to what feels like the bottom of your eyeball. The problem may be with the test. Current coronavirus tests may have a particularly high rate of missing infections. The good news is that the tests appear to be highly specific: If your test comes back positive, it is almost certain you have the infection.
False-negative test results — tests that indicate you are not infected, when you are — seem to be uncomfortably common. Increasingly, and disturbingly, I hear a growing number of anecdotal stories from my fellow doctors of patients testing negative for coronavirus and then testing positive — or people who are almost certainly infected who are testing negative.
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