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Why rapid antigen tests for diagnosing COVID-19 Could Be questionable nowadays?
The Booster serves to decrease the contagion of the omicron variant.
A fellow nurse from my work had typical symptoms of the omicron variant (cough, sore throat, and low-grade fever), as did her husband and sister.
They did antigen tests several times and only came out positive in a PCR eight days after the first test.
The couple had mild symptoms. The nurse’s sister later had pneumonia that required hospital admission.
None of the three had been vaccinated.
Their coworker’s parents also interacted with them over the end of the year, but they were not infected.
His parents had all three doses of mRNA vaccines.
A recent study questions the efficacy of homemade rapid antigen tests because the omicron variant can give symptoms before a positive is detected in rapid tests for its detection.
The results showed all antigen tests had false-negative results. However, in 28 cases, the virus levels detected by the PCR test were high enough to infect others.
The researchers note this does not mean that rapid antigen tests are not helpful. The tests detected the virus in all…
