AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
24 hour walgreens closest to me11/28/2023 ![]() “You don’t want to infect other people, but you also don’t want to stay in isolation longer than you need to,” Mina added. “If you’ve gone from a really dark line to a really faint or negative line in three days, you could probably exit isolation, because your immune system probably cleared the virus,” he said. Mina said it’s OK to use antigen tests to make informed decisions based on your family and the health of the people around you. Some manufacturers have submitted results to the FDA that show that their test kits are still accurate past the expiration date, and people can look up whether their tests are included. In general, experts recommend you don’t use expired tests, but there are some caveats. “I can’t remember the last time I personally got a PCR test,” he said.” Instead, I just opt for saying, ‘Look, I’m going to have a few rapid tests lying around my house for when I need them.’” Can I use an expired Covid test? Mina doesn’t see a huge advantage in PCR tests, although doctors might want to still use them. “They may not be 100% comparable to the PCR tests run by hospital labs, but they’re nice to have, but expensive,” he said. Most at-home tests are antigen tests, although a handful of pricier over-the-counter tests are molecular tests, which are more sensitive in a similar way to PCR. Tran said home tests had a bit of a bad reputation in 2020 but have become the go-to method for most people when it comes to diagnosing Covid.Īt-home tests tend to be less expensive, faster and easy to use, Tran said, although PCR tests are more sensitive and can still detect lower levels of the virus. When should I get a PCR test instead of using an at-home test?īoth tests are good. It’s also important to collect the sample correctly, so Tran recommends that you follow the package directions on at-home tests carefully to get the most accurate results. “If you’re feeling symptomatic, and you think you were exposed, then I would say test again 12 to 24 hours later,” Mina said. ![]() “So if you still suspect then you might want to check it again. ![]() “But again, there’s no such thing as a perfect test,” Tran said. “But if you’ve gone from having a really dark line to a much fainter line, then you should know that you’re likely still able to transmit the virus, but the potential for that transmission is less.”Ī PCR test at a doctor’s office or laboratory has a better chance of picking up low concentrations of the virus, so a negative PCR test might be more reliable. ![]() “You should really assume that you are highly infectious and do everything you can under the sun to not infect other people,” he said. If the test results show up very quickly and the line is very dark, it could indicate you have a great chance of transmitting the virus to others, he added. “If you have enough virus to turn a rapid antigen test positive, you have a lot of virus there,” Mina said. If you get a positive result on a rapid test, it’s most likely that you are contagious and can spread the virus. Does a positive rapid test mean I’m contagious? The changes that lead to new variants tend to occur in the spike protein. and globally detects a protein called the nucleocapsid, which is stable and just doesn’t, hasn’t seen a lot of mutations,” Mina said. “Almost every rapid test that’s authorized in the U.S. That’s because the mutations are happening in a different part of the virus than the portion detected by rapid tests. “We’ve actually never seen a deterioration in accuracy of the tests, given any new variants,” he said.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |