Health officials explain what is considered a positive COVID-19 test
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Columbia/Boone County Health Department addressed questions on Tuesday regarding what is considered a positive COVID-19 test.
Scott Clardy, the local health department’s assistant director said officials only count the positive tests that are diagnosed with COVID-19 diagnostic tests.
Clardy said it’s the only test that is definitive for a positive case, because it includes a nasopharyngeal swab, where a swab is stuck up a nose taking a specimen from the back of the throat and behind the ears where the sinuses are.
An antibody positive test result is not considered a positive case as it is not indicative of a current infection.
Clardy said the antibody test looks for genetic material of this coronavirus, so someone who previously tested positive may still have some of that genetic material in their system, it's just not enough to make them sick and their immune system fought it off enough to where they are not infectious anymore.
Clardy said the health department only counts a positive test result that comes from people who would have an infection at the time that they gave a specimen.
“If an antibody test comes back positive what that means is at some point in time, you have an infection,” Clardy said. “It does not mean that you currently have an infection. And it also doesn't mean that you necessarily are immune from getting the infection again.”
Clardy said another reason antibody tests are not considered a positive result is because there are many different coronaviruses out there with several different antibody tests for it, and some of them are more specific for the one that causes COVID-19, while others are for the different coronaviruses.
Clardy said another question the health department has had is, if people have more than one positive test do they get counted as a positive test more than once?
Clardy said no, that person only gets counted once, so that the positive COVID-19 case numbers are not inflated.
“We count the number of positive people, not the number of positive tests,” Clardy said. “So the person would have three positive tests, they're in our data once, not three times. Our numbers are not inflated by counting every test we count every person.”
Clardy said the health department is trying to figure out how they would count someone who once tested positive for COVID-19, completely recovered, but then tested positive for the virus six to seven months later.
Clardy said the person would probably be counted twice, just as if someone had two separate colds in the same year. He said they would consider that as two colds instead of one cold that just lingered.
Clardy said health department officials believe this could be different on a case by case basis and that they won’t know for sure until this happens in Boone County, but it’s something they are discussing further.
