One sick family, many test results

After a week or so sick in bed in their New York City apartment in March, members of the Johnson-Baruch family were convinced they had been stricken by the novel coronavirus.

Subsequent test results left them with more questions than answers.

Lisa Bernhard has more.

After a week or so sick in bed in their New York City apartment in March, the Johnson-Baruch family were convinced they had been stricken by the novel coronavirus.

Subsequent tests, however, left them with more questions than answers.

Maree Johnson-Baruch – an actress who was starring in Broadway’s “The Phantom of the Opera” before all New York City theaters shut - was first to fall ill.

One by one, her husband Jason and two teenage daughters also felt sick with symptoms that mirrored those of COVID-19.

They called New York State’s Department of Health coronavirus hotline to see if they could get tested but were advised to recuperate at home unless they got very ill.

By April, when they finally felt better, they found a location where they could get tested for the antibodies the immune system produces to fight the virus, hoping it would tell them if they had indeed suffered from COVID-19.

[MAREE JOHNSON-BARUCH] “Now, the strange thing was I tested positive and Jason tested negative to that antibody test.” [JASON BARUCH] “My test showed no presence of any antibodies to COVID-19” Later that month – about six weeks after they first called the state’s coronavirus hotline and a good month after their symptoms had passed – they got a call back saying they could be tested for the virus itself.

Once again, the results surprised them.

Johnson-Baruch, her husband and their younger daughter all tested positive for the virus - but their older daughter tested negative for COVID-19 .

After all the testing, the family felt frustrated by several lingering questions: Were they still in some sense sick?

Could they still infect others?

[JASON BARUCH] “The reality is it’s been very hard getting definitive answers from anyone.

And no one is really willing to put themselves on the line and say, 'hey, you're home free, you have antibodies' or 'you're still contagious.'

No one wants to tell us definitively anything." Dr. Danielle Ompad is an epidemiologist at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

“When you’re getting equivocal answers or perhaps unsatisfying answers from your physician, it’s not because they’re trying to be difficult or they personally they don’t know, it’s because science does not know whether or not antibodies means that you’re immune.” While tests for virus and the antibodies are becoming more widely available, they are not perfect.

They can come back with false positives, false negatives or ambiguous results that can confound people.

[Dr. Ompad] “If I was a person who had control over opening up an economy or undoing the stay-at-home orders, I would be very careful right now about whether or not I let those antibody prevalence estimates determine whether or not we open up.” The Johnson-Baruch family are not quite done with testing.

The daughter who had a negative virus result has since tested positive for antibodies for the virus.

Jason Baruch is also seeking a second antibody test.

A positive test would offer some comfort that he may have some level of immunity – or, at least that’s what he hopes.