Guthrie County Health Services has released new information on the COVID-19 testing they conducted on individuals from West Central Valley Schools.

Public Health Director Jotham Arber announced that after they had tested individuals who had been exposed to a confirmed positive case of COVID-19 on July 20th at West Central Valley, they received results on the 22nd and 23rd and began contact tracing. Some of the results didn’t appear to match with what they had seen in other household contacts they have observed in other cases they investigated. After communicating with the state hygienic lab, the department was informed at 4:30 p.m. July 24th that a batch of the tests were found to not be calibrated correctly and were reran to determine validity. The state lab then determined there were four false positives and a false negative. This means that four individuals that were told were positive for COVID-19 were not and one person told was negative was positive.

The Guthrie and Adair public health departments have reached out to all of the individuals and have asked them to remain under quarantine until August 1st, due to their contact with a confirmed positive case that was run by another lab. Arber confirmed there have been four positive cases in their testing of those involved at West Central Valley, and he apologizes to the families that were given incorrect results. He adds that his department makes every effort to scrutinize results to ensure their validity.