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Dozens of Long Islanders get false-positive coronavirus tests
Seventy-four Long Islanders received false-positive COVID-19 tests recently.
NEW YORK - “There was always that thought that maybe a false positive,” said Howard Austin of Smithtown.
But when Howard Austin was told his coronavirus test was positive he had no choice but to follow the state guidelines. So for more than a week, he was out of work and in quarantine, only to receive a call from Sunrise Medical Laboratories in Hicksville that ran the test.
“They said that they made a mistake, that I’m actually negative,” he said. But that wasn’t until four days after the initial false-positive result and Austin had already told the more than 50 people he had come in close contact with.
He took it upon himself to notify the state and local Health Departments and it turned out he wasn’t the only one with a false positive.
Seventy-four Long Islanders tested over a five-day period received the same results and have been notified.
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Dr. Dwayne Breining, Executive Director of Northwell Health Laboratories says quality monitoring techniques pick up when these errors happen, it’s a known risk with this kind of test and he added all it takes is a splash.
“So if that splash gets on part of the analyzer that does the detection technique it can actually be picked up reading as a result in the next sample when it was really contamination from in the sample before it,” he said.
For their part, Sunrise Laboratories didn’t specify which doctors or urgent care centers use their labs. They did say it was an isolated incident that didn’t impact any patients who received a negative result during that time. The New York Department of Health said in a statement the lab corrected the problem and the Department advised that patients originally reported as positive should be treated as positive pending the outcome of a retest.
As for Austin who gets tested weekly for his job in the medical device industry - he’s fortunate he didn’t lose pay during isolation but feels for the people he contacted who did.
“There are people that need to get out there and work every day and when they can’t, that has an impact on their lives,” he said.