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. 2020 Jun 28;222(6):899–902. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiaa370

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© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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Figure 1. — Suspected false-negative coronavirus disease 2019 test samples contained significantly lower human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) levels compared with a representative pool of specimens submitted for testing. Human DNA levels (RPP30 gene target) were measured using droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) in nasopharyngeal extracts as a molecular marker of biological sampling quality. “Suspect false-negatives” included 23 negative samples from individuals who recorded a positive test within ±12 days of the negative test (gray) and 17 samples from individuals with high clinical suspicion of being infected but never molecularly confirmed (white). The comparison dataset was a consecutive set of 87 samples submitted for testing in April 2020 to the same laboratory (black). P values report the significance level between the comparison dataset and the suspect false-negative group as a whole (black), between the comparison dataset and the negative samples from individuals who reported a positive test within ±12 days (gray) and between the comparison dataset and the negative samples from individuals with high clinical suspicion (white).