We quickly realized however, that even with negative testing we still needed to proceed with full personal protective equipment (PPE) especially for high‐risk procedures involving mucosal incisions or use of instrumentation resulting in potential aerosolization of viral particles, as testing could give a false sense of security. Initially one negative SARS‐CoV‐2 test was required, but early on, after case 3 (below), this was converted to two negative test results with the last negative result within 24 hours of surgery. Apparent false negatives and false positives occasionally occurred, disrupting surgical planning and postoperative care. This is consistent with early reports from China, which report false‐negative rates as high as 30% in known COVID‐19 patients. 24  No data are available on sensitivity and specificity of routine testing of asymptomatic preoperative patients. We were greatly assisted by the rapid institution of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) testing of nasopharyngeal swabs for SARS‐CoV‐2 by our clinical laboratories, progressing within 10 days from a test that took 3 or 4 days to produce results to one that produced results in a few hours. Quigen Rotorgene Platform using U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention primer pairs and the Genmark platform were the two principal types of tests used.25, 26