What You Should Do , When You Have Symptoms , and Negative At-Home Test Results.
'The New York Times' recently offered readers a helpful guide for taking home COVID tests and what the results mean.
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In particular, coming up with a negative result can leave some lingering uncertainty.
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Rapid home antigen tests identify pieces of viral proteins in a swab of your nose.
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They are designed to determine whether there are infectious levels of the virus.
This means that lower levels of COVID could still result in a negative test.
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If you test negative and you have symptoms, don’t assume you’re negative.
Assume that the virus has not had an opportunity to grow up yet.
The symptoms might mean your immune system is just triggering a very early warning, Dr. Michael Mina, Chief science officer for eMed, via 'The New York Times'.
If you test negative and you have symptoms, don’t assume you’re negative.
Assume that the virus has not had an opportunity to grow up yet.
The symptoms might mean your immune system is just triggering a very early warning, Dr. Michael Mina, Chief science officer for eMed, via 'The New York Times'.
Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer for eMed, suggests people get tested on the first day of symptoms. .
If you end up with a negative result but symptoms continue, he advises that precautions should still be taken.
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If testing daily isn't feasible, Dr. Mina suggests testing every 48 hours and taking precautions until symptoms are no longer present.
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If you have symptoms and continue to test negative, the chances that you’re infectious with Covid have gone down a lot.
But you probably should wear a mask that day because you have something, Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco, via 'The New York Times'
