Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’s concerned about the accuracy of COVID-19 test results.

In a news conference Monday, he said there have been several cases where people received positive results, even though they had never been tested in the first place.

“For that to come back positive, when there was no specimen submitted, is problematic. So I’ve heard it enough to be concerned about it," said DeSantis.

People have said they submitted their contact information at a COVID-19 testing site, but after seeing how long the line was, they decided not to wait an hour or more to get the test. Nevertheless, a few days later, they got an email or a phone call telling them that they tested positive.

Representatives at the Centurylink Sports Complex testing site say false positives aren’t possible there, because of how they have it set up.

The Florida Department of Health says, at Centurylink, you submit your contact information right before you get tested. So if somebody were to get out of line, they wouldn’t have had the chance to hand over their phone number or email.

But not all testing sites are the same.

We reached out to Lee Health, which operates several testing sites of its own. Those sites operate by appointment only, and they do take contact info beforehand, but Lee Health says it has not yet had any issues with mixed up results, and it takes several steps to make sure the results get to the right person.

The health system says its sites verify the patient’s identity when they arrive. Then, the person who conducts the test signs and dates each specimen. Finally, the hospital system is in contact with the lab, which verifies correct and matching information on the swab they receive.

DeSantis says his office still doesn’t have an answer as to why some mix ups are happening, but he is asking for the public’s help.

“If you’re somebody that this has happened to, you’re going to come forward and give us the details, because I think that that needs to be corrected," said DeSantis.

This article was written by Rob Manch for WFTX.

In a few weeks, thousands of college students will begin their yearly right of fall by returning to the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, but a return to campus life this year will mean testing and quarantining for those students who chose to come back.

Like colleges and universities across the country, Tufts is experimenting with a new plan that will allow more than 5,000 students to come back to campus while at the same time, instituting rigorous new guidelines in an effort to keep COVID-19 from spreading.

The key to success, testing.

“We wanted to test for COVID at a frequency that would catch people when they’re asymptomatic before they have a chance to spread,” explained Tuft’s President Anthony Monaco.

Tufts plan for the fall is as complex as the virus itself. Students from outside the Northeast will be brought back to campus first, where they will be forced to quarantine for 14 days. Health officials expect at least a small portion of those students to test positive for COVID-19 the moment they step back on campus. Because of that, the university has constructed an extra 200 modular units of dorm space. The idea of the modular facilities is to give campus health officials a contained area to monitor students who test positive for the virus, while at the same time, keeping them out of the general population.

After students from outside the Northeast are brought back to campus, students from the general area around New England will return.

Every single student will be tested twice a week for COVID-19, something experts say will be a key component to safely reopening college campuses this fall. Regardless, school officials expect students to test positive for the virus throughout the fall.

Researchers at Yale’s School of Public Health have been advising Tufts and hundreds of other colleges who are planning to resume some form of in-person learning this fall.

“If we don’t test frequently, we give silent spreaders an opportunity to grab hold and this virus is hard to play catch-up with,” explained Professor A. David Paltiel, who recently published a study on how quickly the virus can spread through colleges if left unchecked.

To study the virus, Paltiel and his colleagues used epidemic modeling to assemble hypothetical situations resembling a college campus. The study found that if you take 5,000 healthy students and add in only 10 students who have COVID-19, hundreds, if not thousands, of kids will be sick by Thanksgiving.

“At that point, the only thing that keeps the virus from getting out of control is Thanksgiving break,” he said.

That is why testing is key, the study found. When Paltiel took those same 5,000 kids and added in 10 students who have COVID-10, but tested every student twice a week, the study found that only about 100 students ended up catching COVID.

“Many universities are planning to only test students who have symptoms, in our view that is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Only adding to the uncertainty of the situation, about 40 percent of college students said they would return to live near campus even if classes were held virtually. Paltiel and other health officials say because of that, it’s more beneficial to have students on-campus where they can be monitored and tested frequently.

“It’s hard and it could be a nightmare, people who say we shouldn’t open campuses should remember the nightmare doesn’t go away,” he said.

COVINGTON, Ky. — Michael Tudor is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but routinely gets tested every two weeks. As the delta variant surges across the region, though, he's finding he has to wait in longer and longer lines to get swabbed, and as the Labor Day holiday weekend approached, those lines got even longer still.

"We've been trying to do it pretty regularly just to make sure we're not passive carriers," the Ludlow, Kentucky, resident said. "I'm glad people are getting tested."

The swell in demand for COVID-19 testing was prompted not just by the recent spike in cases across the region, but also the start of the school year and holiday and seasonal travel.

It's had Tony Remington, CEO of Covington-based Gravity Diagnostics, and his team running ragged, sometimes testing as many as 1,000 patients a day.

"We're burned out," he told WCPO Friday. "We don't want to do testing anymore. We don't want to set up drive-thrus, but it's the culmination of things."

For much of the pandemic, Gravity has operated five free drive-thru testing sites — subsidized by state funds — across the commonwealth and in Indiana, with 15 more sites planned to pop up over the next two weeks. One of those sites, located on a surface parking lot near the now decommissioned IRS building along Covington's Fourth Street corridor near the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge, lately has seen those drive-thru lines back up out onto the street.

"We're close to saying, 'Sorry, we can't set that up for you anymore,'" he said. "But we're not there yet."

Kiana Martinez, a mother of six, said she needs to get tested but is finding it difficult to find appointments. She tried an area Walgreens, where she was told they didn't have any tests available. Some stores have run out of take-home tests. CVS on Wednesday had to work with a new supplier to try to keep up with their national demand.

"We don't want to see one person who wants testing not get testing and a fast result," Remington said.

It's why he said his crews are working seven days a week, some pulling 18-hour shifts to make sure their clinics get rapid results for as many as they can.