US Ohio governor warns against seeing COVID-19 tests as unreliable

WASHINGTON - Governor Mike DeWine of US midwestern state of Ohio on Sunday warned Americans against seeing coronavirus tests as unreliable after he received a false positive result ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to the key swing state.

"I think what people should not take away from my experience (is) that testing is not reliable or doesn't work," DeWine told CNN.

DeWine took a rapid point-of-care antigen test for COVID-19 on Thursday morning in Cleveland as part of the White House protocol for anyone scheduled to come in contact with the president.

After testing positive, DeWine was immediately driven back to the state's capital city Columbus, where the governor, his wife and four members of his staff took another test, a polymerase chain reaction test, at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The result was checked twice, both negative. The governor and his wife took the fourth test and again announced negative results on Saturday.

DeWine said on Sunday that the antigen test he initially took and yielded positive result is "fairly new" and "should be looked at as a screening test" and that the PCR test, which he said over 1.3 million Ohioans have taken, "is very, very, very reliable."

The PCR test is the most commonly used test in the country and is considered the gold standard by medical professionals, according to a report by media company Politico.