| Referenced paper: https://doi.org/10.7326/M23-0385 Not much behind the paywall of the article OP linked: “Rapid antigen tests are much more reliable at detecting COVID-19 in people with symptoms than in those without, finds the largest study to compare home rapid tests with gold-standard PCR tests1. Apurv Soni at the UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts, and his colleagues, followed 5,353 initially uninfected people between October 2021 and January 2022, when the Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 were circulating. For 15 days, the participants regularly took rapid tests at home and sent samples to a laboratory for PCR testing. More than 150 participants tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on PCR tests. On the day of infection onset, rapid tests detected almost 60% of infected participants who had COVID-19 symptoms, but only 10% of those who didn’t. However, repeating the test 3 times, 48 hours apart, led to detection of infections in 75% of asymptomatic participants. Two tests conducted 48-hours apart identified 92% of symptomatic participants. The authors say that an informational campaign about the proper way to take rapid tests might help to preserve public confidence in the tests’ utility.” |
Why do we have to spend tax payer money for a campaign to try and force people to care about the utility of a product that can't accurately detect a symptomless virus.
Honestly starting to forget it was ever even a thing.