PCR tests are much better at detecting lower levels of the virus. In the meantime, just be cautious about your contacts with others, because early on you could be asymptomatic while Covid is brewing inside of you, but you still might have the potential to transmit it. ![]() Otherwise, you could be wasting a test kit. ![]() This is why it is best to wait for approximately five days before testing yourself after an exposure. The incubation period for Covid is any from 2-14 days and differs from one person to the next. So, if you have just had an exposure, if you test yourself immediately after, the test will be negative. This is a major challenge with the home test kits. Sometimes the levels are too low to be picked up by the test, but still high enough to infect someone else. After a virus enters your respiratory tract, it reproduces itself exponentially inside your body until it reaches high enough levels in your secretions to be detected with a test. In this situation, it is very important to follow up the test with a PCR test, especially if you have had a recent exposure to someone with known Covid or you are feeling ill with Covid-related symptoms.Įvery infectious disease has what is called an incubation period – the microbe needs time to grow in an animal or human before it can cause illness or lead to further spread. We call that a “false negative” test result. Early on in illness, even though someone might already be contagious or sick, the test can be negative. This leads to a common phenomenon that we see with any diagnostic test. This means home test kits will not report a positive reading as early as a PCR test might after someone is infected. They are not as sensitive for picking up low levels of the virus as PCR tests, which detect viral genetic material. ![]() The home test kits detect viral proteins. With any diagnostic test, timing is everything. But if the C line doesn’t show up, it means there is something wrong with the test and the results are unreliable. Someone who didn’t read the instructions might mistakenly assume the C line was for Covid, but it really stands for “control.” The T line stands for “test.” If you see both a red “test” line and a red “control” line then the test is positive for Covid. The reason for the red line under the letter C is to indicate that the test worked correctly.
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