Re:Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado
by thomaslord on Thursday January 06, 2022 @03:57PM
(#29830044)
This is for good reason. Rapid tests are substantially less sensitive and often give false negatives, especially for asymptomatic cases. There are also a lot of rapid "at home" tests out there that have high false positive rates, so even if non-PCR tests were added to the data the only reasonable approach would be to still require them to be administered by a medical professional to make sure the test is correctly administered and that the test itself is relatively high quality.
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The idea that rapid tests are less sensitive and therefore not valuable is summer-2020 thinking and outdated.
Rapid tests are perfectly fine and should be counted by health departments.
Case in point. My family of 4 all tested positive on rapid tests. 3/4 of us had symptoms. None of us received PCR tests because the next available appointments (other than a 6 hour wait at a state run testing center) were a week away.
Thats 4 people not counted. And we were part of an outbreak that included 3 other families that all tested positive via rapid tests.