A Nashville man told his local news station last week that he received at least three calls from the state about apparently testing positive for the novel coronavirus.
The problem? He was never tested.
According to News4 Investigates, Brock Ballou, a resident of the Nashville suburb of Mount Juliet, said he was anticipating a call from a contact tracer after one of his coworkers tested positive for COVID-19. However, the tracer repeatedly told Mr. Ballou that he was positive for the virus, despite the fact that he was never tested, he says.
“She specifically said – I’m looking at it right here – you tested positive – this is a follow up call to see how your symptoms are,” Ballou told the news station.
Asked if he possibly misheard the woman on the phone, Ballou said she reiterated his supposedly positive test results multiple times.
“I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she said, she was looking right at it,” he recalled, “she told me I’m in the system – looking right at it that you’re showing positive.”
Over the following days, Ballou received more calls from the state about his COVID symptoms.
“(The contact tracer) said I’m still seeing that you’re positive. Courtesy call – checking your symptoms,” he said.
News4 Investigates said all three phone numbers used to reach out to Ballou have been confirmed by the news station to have come from workers with the state health department of Tennessee.
The apparent discrepancy has Ballou questioning the accuracy of the state’s COVID-19 case counts.
“I said I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s wrong. I’m just another number when I’m not.”
The Tennessee health department confirmed through a spokeswoman that they are investigating the discrepancy.
“I can also tell you there is no concern with our count of cases in regard to our reporting of those who test positive,” the spokeswoman said. “Those entries are based on lab results, not on information provided from the monitoring team.”
According to Ballou, he’s been told by the state that the calls made to him were done via a third party contracted by the health department.
As noted by The Daily Wire last week, the Florida State Health Department confirmed that some testing laboratories in the state have not been disclosing their negative novel coronavirus testing results accurately, skewing the positivity rates dramatically. At least two labs were discovered to have inflated their positivity rates of the virus by a factor of ten.
“Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, which means every single person tested was positive. Other labs had very high positivity rates,” FOX 35 explained Tuesday.
It was uncovered that Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center’s reported positivity rate of 76% was actually around 6%, a spokesperson for the center revealed. FOX 35 added, “Orlando Health’s positivity rate is only 9.4 percent, not 98 percent as in the report.”
Related: Florida Labs Found Significantly Inflating Positive COVID Testing Rate