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The goal in the development of tests is to minimize to zero the number of false negatives and to minimize as much as practical the number of false positives.

Senator Rand Paul had a positive test but it must be confirmed. There is a two-phase process, screen with tests and confirm with certainty with lab kits those with positive screen results.

Not sure if the Senator has had a confirmation test come back yet.

In test development, we want ZERO people with the virus to get past a screening test but that does not mean they have the virus. It means those who come back negative are really negative as in ‘true negative’. With Statistics we want false negatives to be like 99.5+% precise.

With false positives, we can allow a little more relaxation. We can allow a test to be say 90+% confident.

There is usually a trade off between the confidence bands in false negatives and false positives. We want no one to ‘slip through’ on a false negative and we don’t want to inconvenience too many who are false positive.