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Gov. Mike DeWine tested negative for the coronavirus hours after a positive rapid-result test had prevented him from welcoming President Trump to Ohio on Thursday, a whiplash reversal that reflected the nation’s increasingly complex state of testing. In a high-profile example of a new testing frontier, Mr. DeWine first received an antigen test, which allows for results in minutes, not days, but has been shown to be less accurate. The positive result came as a “big surprise,” said Mr. DeWine, a Republican, who had not been experiencing symptoms other than a headache. (Mervosh, 8/6)

Hours after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the governor announced a second test had come back negative. “In a second COVID-19 test administered today in Columbus, Governor Mike DeWine has tested negative for COVID-19,” the governor’s Twitter account tweeted Thursday evening. “First Lady Fran DeWine and staff members have also all tested negative.” (Budryk, 8/6)

A top Republican legislator in Kansas was hospitalized last month after testing positive for the novel coronavirus and didn’t disclose it to colleagues until this week. The state’s Democratic governor declared Thursday that she’ll get tested because the two of them attended a meeting together after he was hospitalized. Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr.’s delayed acknowledgment of his hospitalization — in an email to fellow House Republicans after Tuesday’s primary — concerned colleagues, particularly Democrats. Gov. Laura Kelly called his decision to attend a July 29 meeting at the Statehouse “reckless and dangerous.” (Hanna, 8/7)

Gov. Kevin Stitt contracted COVID-19 after hugging some friends from Tulsa who were visiting him, the governor said Thursday. “I thought I got it down in Lawton because I was touring different facilities,” Stitt said in a brief interview at the state Health Department's new contact tracing center in Oklahoma City. “But anyway, some of my buddies from — some older gentlemen from Tulsa came down to see me. They wanted to talk to me about a new ministry that they had in Tulsa between the police and the African American community and building bridges and so they came down to see me. I hadn’t seen them in a long time and broke my own rule, gave them all hugs. I’ve known them for years. And they ended up having it. So that’s how I got it.” (Casteel, 8/7)

For months, the call for coronavirus testing has been led by one resounding refrain: To keep outbreaks under control, doctors and researchers need to deploy the most accurate tests available — ones reliable enough to root out as many infections as possible, even in the absence of symptoms. That’s long been the dogma of infectious disease diagnostics, experts say, since it helps ensure that cases won’t be missed. During this pandemic, that has meant relying heavily on PCR testing, an extremely accurate but time- and labor-intensive method that requires samples to be processed at laboratories. (Wu, 8/6)

The country needs as many as 100,000 contact tracers to fight the pandemic, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress in June. We need billions of dollars to fund them, public health leaders pleaded in April. But in August, with coronavirus cases increasing in more than half of states, America has neither the staff nor the resources to be able to trace the contacts of every new case — a key step in the COVID-19 public health response. (Simmons-Duffin, 8/7)