A story of a D.C. woman who had traveled through the Seoul airport and was unable to access a coronavirus test made the rounds on social media over the weekend, highlighting the confusion many Americans feel about the spread of the virus and who should be tested.

Maggie McDow, 46, of the Forest Hills section of the District, said that, to her alarm, the D.C. Department of Health overruled an emergency room doctor treating her Friday at George Washington University Hospital, preventing her from being tested for the virus. She wrote about the experience in a Facebook post shared widely on Saturday.

“It’s really worrisome to me when a doctor feels you should have a test and someone’s overruling them,” McDow said in a phone interview Saturday while self-quarantined with achiness and chills. “To me, that’s just wrong.”

A top Health Department official said McDow did not qualify for a test because airport exposure, even in a country such as South Korea with community spread of the disease, does not warrant testing. “We bring a different perspective to that single clinical encounter,” said Anjali Talwalkar, senior deputy director for the community health administration at the D.C. Department of Health. She made the comments Saturday evening at a news conference in the District. “An airport is not considered by CDC to be that kind of exposure.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) sought to quell concern about the case.

“I will be very sure that our health department has checked and double checked to make sure that we’re are making the test available to everyone who meets the guidelines,” she said at the news conference. She added that the District would consider contacting people who previously didn’t warrant testing, if the guidelines change.

The situation left McDow frustrated about halfway through a period of self-isolation that kept her away from her 13- and 14-year-old daughters for more than two weeks.

McDow rushed to her flight for a week-long trip to Thailand on Feb. 23. When she arrived on her layover in Seoul, she learned that the worries about the virus had exploded overnight. She quickly bought a face mask during her 1½-hour layover and proceeded to her connection. After a week in Thailand, she began to feel sick on her flight home to Dulles, and in the next few days twice contacted the D.C. Department of Health for guidance, she said.

She said she was told that she was low risk, but finally went to the emergency room at GWU Hospital, where she said a doctor ruled out the flu and other illnesses and wanted to test her for coronavirus, but District health officials refused.