With some states posting record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, President Donald Trump continues to downplay the concern, falsely asserting that cases are up “only because of our big number testing,” and pointing to the falling number of daily COVID-19 deaths.
A viral claim on Facebook erroneously tells users that “you will test positive” for COVID-19 if “you’ve gotten flu shots during the past ten years.” Vaccine and infectious disease experts told us that’s false, and the Food and Drug Administration says this hasn’t been observed in any authorized tests.
We’ll run through how the tests work and why it’s so hard to interpret what the results might mean.
Federal officials have provided confusing and sometimes contradictory statements about the number and availability of tests to diagnose new coronavirus infections. We’ll explain how testing works, what happened with the CDC’s coronavirus test and what’s known about how many tests are available in the U.S.