ADAMS COUNTY — Not everyone who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus is allowing themselves to be tested, according to information received anecdotally by a health official in Adams County.

Many of the cases in Adams County have been centered in a handful of families, and the county health department has asked those living with people sickened by the virus, considered to be “close contacts,” to be tested. In some cases, however, they have refused, said Adams County Health Department Community Health Director Karen Potts.

“People might be realizing that when you get tested, you and your family get put into quarantine,” Potts said. “A lot of people are living off one income, they now understand you can’t go back to work until you get your results back.”

While testing criteria have become more relaxed, allowing a wider array of people to request a test, fewer people have been making those requests lately, Potts said. As spring seasonal work begins to ramp up, Potts said it’s possible that others simply not requesting a test may be contributing to a recent overall decline of tests being taken in the county.

It’s unclear how many may be avoiding the test. Those cases have been reported to the health department only anecdotally, Potts said. The Columbia Basin Health Association, which has been conducting tests in the Othello area, did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of those who may have refused testing but are showing symptoms of the virus have been included in the county’s tally of “probable” cases, Potts said. They aren’t the only “probable” cases who won’t be tested, either, as that tally includes family members of infected people who had symptoms at one time but have recovered and would no longer have sufficient viral load to test positive, Potts said.

In some cases, those who didn’t take COVID-19 tests may still one day be able to determine if they had at one point been infected. There have been proposals to do antibody tests, which could show if a person had recovered from the virus.

If the body is able to become temporarily immune to the virus after it recovers, these antibodies could potentially signal who can return to work without fear of becoming reinfected and contagious.

But health care providers have been warned against using antibody tests as diagnostic tools, as it is unclear how reliable the results would be on an individual level, Potts said, pointing to primers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.