Three Times She Said Goes Round Again
The Home Exam Is Negative, but Could I Nevertheless Accept Covid?
If you take symptoms simply get a negative home exam issue, y'all may demand to keep taking precautions and test once again (and once again).
What does a negative result on a home Covid-19 test really mean?
That's the question that has confounded many people who have reached for a home test because they have a sore throat, cough or runny olfactory organ. Later swabbing their nose and waiting an anxious fifteen minutes, the consequence is negative.
While at that place's relief in getting a negative upshot, there'due south also uncertainty. Am I really free of Covid? Or did the exam just not detect it? Should I test again? Tin I spend time with other people?
The confusion is justified, say testing and public health experts. It stems from a lack of understanding most how the tests work. Rapid home antigen tests look for pieces of viral proteins from a swab of your olfactory organ, and they are designed to identify whether you have an infectious level of the virus. But a negative test is not a guarantee you don't have Covid.
It could be that your symptoms are an immune response signaling the arrival of Covid or another invader. The harder your allowed organization is working to tamp downwards the virus, especially an immune system supercharged by vaccine antibodies, the more likely you lot are to go an early negative result on a rapid examination, even if you lot're infected.
"Information technology may be that the virus in your body is having a tug of war with your immune system," said Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer for eMed, a company that helps rapid test users become treatment from home. "If you test negative and yous accept symptoms, don't assume you're negative. Assume that the virus has not had an opportunity to grow upwardly yet. The symptoms might hateful your immune system is only triggering a very early alert."
Dr. Mina advises people to take a rapid test on the first day of symptoms. A positive effect ways you virtually certainly have Covid. If the result is negative and your symptoms go along, you should nonetheless have precautions, wear a mask and avert close contact with other people. If y'all can't test daily, then wait 48 hours and examination again. If you're still negative but your symptoms persist or are getting worse, you should have some other exam on Day 4. Or you may want to become to a testing center to have a P.C.R. examination, which can sometimes detect Covid a little sooner than a habitation test, although you may have to expect a 24-hour interval or two for the results.
Experts say that if you take symptoms and continue to get negative results on dwelling tests, it may be that your immune system is doing a good job beating the virus. Or it could be that you have some other illness. Either way, you should try to avoid infecting others.
"If y'all have symptoms and continue to test negative, the chances that you're infectious with Covid have gone down a lot," said Dr. Robert Wachter, the chair of the medicine section at the University of California, San Francisco. "But y'all probably should wear a mask that day because yous have something."
And, remember, the result of your home examination is just one piece of information. If you haven't left the house in weeks, your negative result afterwards a few tests is probably authentic. If you take symptoms and yous've been spending fourth dimension in bars or a family unit member has been exposed to Covid, you should be more cautious, even if the initial results are negative. It may be that you tested as well early and that your viral load isn't high enough to be detected.
When Dr. Jillian Horton, an internal medicine doctor in Winnipeg, started feeling ill, she was pretty sure she had Covid. Her hubby had been exposed and had symptoms, also. She decided to conduct an experiment of one, testing herself several times over the grade of a few days to track the dynamics of the virus. "With my husband testing positive and myself very symptomatic, I was sure I had Covid," Dr. Horton said. "I was curious to run across what I could pinpoint in terms of when I might flip positive."
Dr. Horton'southward husband became ill on a Friday nighttime, and that evening she tested negative. On Saturday, she began to feel sick and tested herself three times throughout the day. All three results were negative.
By Dominicus morning, she woke upward and was feeling worse. At six a.m. she tested and saw a faint line on the test — what she called a "weak positive." She took two more tests on Sunday and both were negative.
On Monday morning, she tested again, and the test quickly turned positive.
What is notable about Dr. Horton's experiment is that if she had tested at a different time on Sunday, she may never have discovered the weak positive. Her allowed organization was clearly battling the virus, equally evidenced by her two negative test results later in the day.
Dr. Horton noted that testing at the right time to take hold of a high viral load was similar to putting a internet in a stream. If the fish aren't at that place, you won't take hold of anything. But if you time it so that the fish are plentiful, you'll catch your dinner.
Dr. Horton said she was concerned that too many people think the tests aren't working when, in fact, they are a useful tool if yous understand how to use them. They are ideal for "ruling in" Covid, but you take to consider more data when evaluating a negative examination.
"So oft I hear people say, 'The test is useless,'" Dr. Horton said. "What my experience illustrated is that when yous accept symptoms, the tests are really 'rule-in' tests. I retrieve of those two days when I was so symptomatic. I had one positive test and five negative tests. In that location was just 1 moment in there where I was more infectious."
Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering science at Virginia Tech and one of the earth'south leading experts on viral transmission, said she assumed her daughter had Covid fifty-fifty afterwards a rapid exam came back negative. The child had a fever and sore throat, and she had been exposed to Covid through her gymnastics team.
Just testing proved useful for knowing that her girl wasn't highly contagious, which helped Dr. Marr's family know how to manage the run a risk. "We knew we needed to be careful," Dr. Marr said. "Merely we didn't have to totally put her in jail. The test told us that the viral load was non high enough that we had to lock her in her room and be that worried virtually all of us getting information technology." Instead, the family unit wore masks and opened windows to meliorate ventilation.
Kristina Kasparian, who works from dwelling house in Montreal, believes she may have gotten Covid from her husband, who is a schoolteacher. They disagreed on whether a home test he took showed a faint positive. But a few days later she woke upwardly with tightness in her chest and a sore throat. Her test was positive, and her husband has continued to exam negative.
"Information technology's swell to have this tool, but it's such a variable snapshot in time," she said.
Dr. Mina said that despite the limitations, people would benefit from frequent testing any time they doubtable they accept been exposed, have symptoms or want to be sure they are not infectious before spending fourth dimension with a person at high run a risk. He also recommends testing before you lot start interacting with others over again to exist sure you're not notwithstanding infectious.
"These are tools that have massive benefit during a pandemic like this," Dr. Mina said. "They will catch yous when you're virtually infectious. They volition fifty-fifty catch you most of the time when you're merely slightly infectious. They will catch nigh everyone when they have a high enough viral load to spread. Simply it won't be perfect."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/well/live/at-home-covid-test-negative.html
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