RAPID TESTS TO BE INCLUDED IN COVID-19 TESTING

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Starting Tuesday, the Oklahoma State Health Department (OSDH) will start including rapid antigen COVID-19 tests in its daily reporting.

As a result, state health officials said communities should expect to see higher daily totals.

Rapid tests, like some used at Weatherford Regional Hospital and Xpress Wellness, were previously reported to the CDC but not included in the OSDH daily updates.

Weatherford physicians have maintained the actual number of positive tests for Weatherford and surrounding areas are higher than what is reported in the state’s daily release because the WRH and Xpress Wellness offer the rapid tests.

State Commissioner of Health Lance Frye said moving forward the state would count rapid antigen and rapid antibody tests in the daily reporting data.

Antibody testing, antigen testing and unconfirmed positives were, up until now, lumped together in a section labeled as “probable cases,” due to not being as accurate as the PCR testing and determined they should not be included in their daily reporting of positive cases.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Oklahoma had a total of 5,644 as of September 4.

Past reported antigen and antibody tests will not be included in the data retro actively. Only new positive tests moving forward will be counted.

Some people may ask why rapid tests are even being used and the answer may boil down to contact tracing. Rapid tests have a faster turnaround, allowing health officials to contact a person who may have had contact with someone who has a confirmed case, potentially preventing that person from spreading it to others.

PCR tests, while more accurate, have a slower turnaround.

The CDC lists the incubation period for COVID-19 as 2-14 days. With some PCR test results taking 20 days or more to return, contract tracing becomes less effective with non-rapid testing. John Stitt, father of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, told The Frontier he and his wife still hadn’t received their results 20 days after taking their test.

Local family practitioner Dr. Brian Bluth said the additional reporting of the rapid tests will be very useful information moving forward.

“The more information we can put into the hands of the public, the more likely people will take this pandemic seriously. It is important to know citizens can get the virus at any time and the exposure probability is probably much higher than people realize. It just further emphasizes the importance of physical distance, mask or shields and hygiene. Reporting of higher numbers will serve to remind people to have the tests taken with any of the symptoms,” Dr. Bluth said.

“I have seen patients with many of the symptoms whose tests come back negative. This is not a definitive they did not have the virus. Many factors can lead to that. It is often a factor of improper collection methods, testing too early or even false negative results from faulty tests. All of these lead to the importance of testing often with any symptoms of the virus. Typically the health department offers testing without any out-of-pocket costs.” Dr. Bluth said.

Weatherford Regional Hospital C.E.O. Brian Denton said the local hospital and Express Wellness had been in communication about a way to present the information about all tests, not just the tests reported by OSDH.

“We felt the more information we could get out there the better any new policies decisions regarding schools and public gatherings could be made. We estimated the actual number of positive cases to be at least 50% higher,” Denton said.

Denton said they felt more information would make better medical sense. Before they could put the format in place the reporting rules were changed to include the rapid (antigen) tests which are expected to be reported starting Tuesday.

“I think this will help in decision making. I believe schools should stay in session as long as it is feasible for the sake of the well-being of the students and taking into consideration the economic impact,” Denton added.