2 hour 25 minute timer11/17/2023 “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. According to the CDC, a person should isolate for five days after testing positive, and then wear a mask for another five days or until you have two negative tests 48 hours apart. If you do test positive for Covid, how do you know when you’re negative again?Īlthough some things have changed since the beginning of the pandemic, if you’ve tested positive and you’re currently positive, you should isolate. “I know it costs money and I know it saves time, but if you’re going to get a wrong result that could lead to unintended consequences,” he said. The compounds and chemicals in the test kits can degrade over time, he noted. “We don’t try to see an expired carton of milk and decide to drink it, right?” Tran said it’s not a good idea to use any expired test unless the FDA has confirmed that the results are accurate for that particular test. However, if the control line included in the test doesn’t show up or is very faint, it’s not reliable and he recommends throwing the test out. “Generally they’re all very, very similar, and they’re not going to expire within two years of manufacturing,” he said. Mina said he also recommends looking at the manufacture date and said that rapid antigen tests may remain reliable up to two years after that date. 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. 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. If you are taking a rapid test at home to see if you have Covid, “it’s usually recommended to test over a few days, once a day, for a couple of days,” he said.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 may have tested too early, and the virus still hasn’t replicated enough yet,” Tran said. If you test negative, many of the same recommendations still hold - you may need to do repeat testing to ensure that the result is accurate. “But I would say the best rule of thumb is to start testing three days after exposure, and if you’re negative, test again on day four or five,” Mina said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends testing at day five after exposure, and he said that some people won’t test positive until days six or seven - and that’s within the range of what’s normal. He recommends testing at two to three days after exposure, and if you’re negative, test again the next day. If you were exposed to someone with Covid, Mina said, you are unlikely to test positive in the first day or so. When should I test if I was exposed to Covid? ![]() ![]() “So I would be cautious if you’re positive, keep the mask on, and avoid contact as we have in the past,” he 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.” “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.
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