This blog originated as a press release from Notre Dame News.
As testing for the coronavirus continues throughout the United States, researchers have been closely watching results, particularly reported rates of false negatives.
According to the Radiological Society of North America, a reported 40 to 70 percent of coronavirus tests from throat swab samples returned false negatives at the onset of the epidemic. Given the highly infectious nature of this particular coronavirus, individuals receiving false negative results — told they do not carry the virus when in fact they do — could continue to infect others.
“It is very concerning,” said Hsueh-Chia Chang, the Bayer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “In an overcrowded hospital, where there is only room to quarantine the COVID-19 carriers, false negatives would mean some carriers can continue to infect other patients and healthcare workers. This, unfortunately, is also true for other infectious viral diseases such as dengue and malaria, when there is an epidemic. False negatives are usually not an urgent problem, when every symptomatic patient can be quarantined and there are fewer people to infect — until an epidemic overcrowds our hospitals and we have only enough space to sequester the carriers.”
At Notre Dame, Chang’s research lab focuses on the development of new diagnostic and micro/nanofluidic devices that are portable, sensitive and fast. His work includes diagnostics with applications to DNA/RNA sensing. Current coronavirus tests are RNA-based.
Chang said technology his lab developed for other uses could easily be extended to apply to testing for the coronavirus.