PCR test results create false alarm at a hospital

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center thought it had an outbreak of whooping cough.  Nearly 1,000 staff members were given a PCR test.  142 of them came back positive.

Later, more definitive testing was done.  Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed with the definitive test. Instead, it appears that the staff probably had ordinary respiratory diseases such as the common cold.

Of course, that leads to the question of why rely on them at all. “At face value, obviously they shouldn’t be doing it,” Dr. Perl said. But, she said, often when answers are needed and an organism like the pertussis bacterium is finicky and hard to grow in a laboratory, “you don’t have great options.”

Sources:

• 
  January 22, 2007. Gina Kolata. “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.” The New York Times, sec. Health.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html.
  News.
• 
  January 22, 2007. “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.” Ocala.Com.
  https://www.ocala.com/article/20070122/News/604220809.
  News.
  This is a more accessible version of the same story.
• 
  August 24, 2007. “Outbreaks of Respiratory Illness Mistakenly Attributed to Pertussis — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Tennessee, 2004–2006.” MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report], Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5633a1.htm.
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• 
  August 24, 2007. The Associated Press. “Thousands Wrongly Treated for Whooping Cough.” NBC News.
  http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/thousands-wrongly-treated-whooping-cough-flna1C9468509.
  News.