A 25-bed hospital is selling blood tests it says will tell people if they have COVID-19 immunity, but public health officials say that's not what the tests do.
By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN
Kansas News Service
LAWRENCE — Herington Municipal Hospital got fed up with long waits for lab results that would tell its patients with respiratory symptoms whether they have the novel coronavirus.
So when a sales representative called the 25-bed hospital in rural central Kansas offering tests that produce results in less than half an hour, Herington ordered 500.
“We answered the phone on the right day,” CEO Isabel Schmedemann said in an interview this week. “I wish we had ordered more.”
One hundred people in her community have already come in for the test.
“They want answers,” she said. “They want to know. And they’re scared.”
Amid a pandemic that has hospitalized hundreds of Kansans and killed more than 80, supply shortages have slowed typical COVID-19 nose swab tests and health providers have scrambled to find solutions.
But public health officials around the world worry that desperation to access testing could open the way for unproven products that give patients a false sense of safety — putting them in greater danger.
Herington Hospital’s rollout of new blood-based tests triggered swift action from state and local health officials.
On its website, the hospital advertises the technology as approved by the state. “It tells you if you have immunity,” the hospital claims.
Wrong on both counts, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says. Attempts to convince the hospital of the test’s problems over the phone weren’t successful, the agency says.
State health secretary Lee Norman said he would alert other hospitals and labs around the state to concerns about the tests. He warned the public in a press conference viewed by tens of thousands of people on Facebook that many antibody tests — meant to show a patient’s exposure to a virus — don’t necessarily tell people what they want to know.
People who test positive with the Herington tests aren’t being counted toward the state’s COVID-19 tally. The state has about 1,500 known cases, including one in Dickinson County.
“You could get a positive if you had nothing other than a common cold,” county public health director John Hultgren said.
Dickinson County began calling Herington’s patients to inform them directly.
“I’m livid about this,” Schmedemann said. “We’re serious about providing quality health care.”