The governor said he felt confident in the results of a negative test that was taken hours after he tested positive while being screened to greet President Trump.
The initial positive test came as a surprise to Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, who said he had a headache but no other symptoms. Credit…John Minchillo/Associated Press
Gov. Mike DeWine tested negative for the coronavirus hours after a positive rapid-result test had prevented him from welcoming President Trump to Ohio on Thursday, a whiplash reversal that reflected the nation’s increasingly complex state of testing.
In a high-profile example of a new testing frontier, Mr. DeWine first received an antigen test, which allows for results in minutes, not days, but has been shown to be less accurate. The positive result came as a “big surprise,” said Mr. DeWine, a Republican, who had not been experiencing symptoms other than a headache.
Later on Thursday, he was tested using a more standard procedure known as polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., an accurate but time-intensive method that requires samples to be processed at a laboratory. His wife, Fran, and staff members also tested negative.
“We feel confident in the results,” the governor’s office said in a statement late Thursday, noting that the negative result had been processed twice. “This is the same P.C.R. test that has been used over 1.6 million times in Ohio by hospitals and labs all over the state.”
The puzzling results capped a long day for Mr. DeWine, 73, who drove three hours up Interstate 71 to meet with Mr. Trump in Cleveland. He had hoped to discuss testing, a key issue that has plagued the response to the virus in the United States. But first, he had to be tested himself as part of a routine White House screening.
After the unwelcome news, the president stood alone outside Marine One and praised Mr. DeWine as “a very good friend of mine,” while Mr. DeWine left to get the secondary test and returned to quarantine at his home in Cedarville, Ohio.
Several people have tested positive as part of regular screenings meant to protect the president, including Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican who has frequently refused to don a face covering in the Capitol. Campaign staff members who attended the president’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., in June also tested positive.
The immediate result Mr. DeWine received during the White House screening stands in contrast to the experience of many Americans, who have had to wait hours to be tested for the virus and continue to face turnaround times that stretch for days and even weeks.
Public health experts say that widespread, rapid testing is necessary for quarantining and contact tracing to effectively control the virus. But the United States has consistently struggled to test as frequently as needed. The country has recently averaged about 700,000 tests per day, nowhere near the millions of tests that some models recommend.
Experts are increasingly arguing that the best chance to catch the most outbreaks is through large numbers of less accurate tests. But there are drawbacks: Antigen tests will miss some people who would test positive by P.C.R., with some past antigen tests missing up to half the infections they looked for.
Mr. DeWine was the second governor to publicize a positive test, after Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican, tested positive for the virus last month.
A mild-mannered career politician, Mr. DeWine spent decades in public office — as a county prosecutor, state senator, congressman, lieutenant governor, U.S. senator and state attorney general — largely out of the national spotlight, until the pandemic turned him into something of a social media sensation. At times breaking with his party to take a more assertive approach on public health, Mr. DeWine was the first governor to shut down schools, and he issued an early stay-at-home order in March.
His daily 2 p.m. news briefings, in which he took on a professorial air, speaking alongside graphs and charts while wearing round glasses and colorful ties representing Ohio universities, spawned a fan club this spring. The briefings, known as “Wine With DeWine,” inspired T-shirts and wine glasses with the motto “It’s 2 o’clock somewhere.”
But his approach also drew an uproar from protesters who gathered outside the State Capitol and from members of his own party. Amid the stay-at-home order and business closures, Republicans accused his administration of “micromanaging” residents and pumping up coronavirus statistics to scare Ohioans.The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated August 6, 2020
- Why are bars linked to outbreaks?
- Think about a bar. Alcohol is flowing. It can be loud, but it’s definitely intimate, and you often need to lean in close to hear your friend. And strangers have way, way fewer reservations about coming up to people in a bar. That’s sort of the point of a bar. Feeling good and close to strangers. It’s no surprise, then, that bars have been linked to outbreaks in several states. Louisiana health officials have tied at least 100 coronavirus cases to bars in the Tigerland nightlife district in Baton Rouge. Minnesota has traced 328 recent cases to bars across the state. In Idaho, health officials shut down bars in Ada County after reporting clusters of infections among young adults who had visited several bars in downtown Boise. Governors in California, Texas and Arizona, where coronavirus cases are soaring, have ordered hundreds of newly reopened bars to shut down. Less than two weeks after Colorado’s bars reopened at limited capacity, Gov. Jared Polis ordered them to close.
- I have antibodies. Am I now immune?
- As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.
- I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?
- The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.
- What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?
- Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees — without giving you the sick employee’s name — that they may have been exposed to the virus.
- What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
As new daily cases in Ohio surged this summer, ballooning to more than 1,000 a day, more than the state’s previous peak in April, Mr. DeWine again took on a more urgent tone. “Don’t we all want to be around to meet our future children, our future grandchildren?” he said during a televised state address last month. “To attend their baptism, to watch our kids and grandkids graduate from school?”
He later issued a statewide mask order, drawing familiar criticism. Before the governor’s negative test on Thursday, a Republican state representative, Nino Vitale, posted a photo of Mr. DeWine wearing a face covering with the news he had tested positive: “I thought masks worked?”
Mr. DeWine pushed back against critics on Thursday, saying he had received several “not so nice” text messages suggesting that wearing a face covering did not matter. “Look, we know it does,” he said.
Ohio is among eight states that this week made a bipartisan pact to buy four million antigen tests, with the hope of detecting outbreaks more quickly. The governors are negotiating to buy the tests from two medical companies — Becton, Dickinson & Company and the Quidel Corporation — whose tests could produce false negative results between 15 and 20 percent of the time.
Speaking to reporters after his positive test, Mr. DeWine said that he had considered the possibility of an inaccurate result but that that would not change his desire to pursue a variety of testing options for the state, including more rapid testing.
“It’s a constant re-evaluation,” he said. “Collectively, we know more about the virus today than we did in March. Same way with testing.”
Even so, the contradictory test results that the governor received show that there is considerable room for improvement. His office said that “out of an abundance of caution,” the governor would be tested again in two days.
Source: New York Times
