District of Columbia health officials fumbled Zika testing for hundreds of residents last year, including two pregnant women who were incorrectly told they did not have the virus when in fact they were infected.
The mistakes, made public Thursday, have prompted officials to redo more than 400 tests for the Zika virus, including for nearly 300 pregnant women who may have mistakenly been told they didn’t have the mosquito-borne viral infection.
The tests involve specimens collected from men and women between July 14 and Dec. 14, 2016 that were analyzed by Washington’s public health lab.
The lab processed 409 Zika tests, including 294 for pregnant women. The specimens from the pregnant women were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for retesting; the remaining samples for 115 non-pregnant women and men have been sent to other public health labs approved by the CDC, officials said.
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