As COVID-19 tests become more widely available across the US, scientists have warned about a growing concern: Many people with negative results might actually have the virus.
That could have devastating implications as a global recession looms and governments wrangle with the question of when to reopen economies shuttered as billions of people were ordered to stay home in an effort to break transmission of the deadly disease.
The majority of tests around the world use a technology called PCR, which detects pieces of the coronavirus in mucus samples.
But "there are a lot of things that impact whether or not the test actually picks up the virus," Priya Sampathkumar, an infectious diseases specialist at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, told AFP. "It