By Adrianna Rodriguez, USA Today
It’s never been harder for Americans to get their hands on at-home rapid tests, as the fast-moving omicron variant fuels more than half a million new COVID-19 cases each day.
The lucky ones with tests don't want to waste them.
Early data suggests virus particles from COVID variants – including omicron – may appear in the throat before reaching nasal passages where test swabs are done. And federal regulators warn the rapid tests in general may not be as effective detecting the new variant. To make sure they don't miss an infection, some have opted to add a swab to the back of their throat as well as their nose.
But federal agencies and health experts urge that at-home tests be used as directed and to not add a throat swab – for now. Throat swabbing may be called for in the future, experts say, but the tests currently authorized in the U.S. weren’t manufactured to detect virus in a person’s throat and could deliver false results.
“The thing about anything you do at home is that people are free to use these tests however they want to use them. That’s the democracy of at-home testing, right?” said Dr. Emily Volk, president of the College of American Pathologists. “But they need to do the test as prescribed. They’re not FDA-authorized any other way.”
The idea of throat swabbing gained popularity after the Food and Drug Administration announced last week rapid antigen tests may lose some of their sensitivity to the omicron variant.
The FDA warning was followed by a preprint study published Wednesday that gained traction on social media and casted more doubt on rapid antigen testing.
The study, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, tracked 30 people in New York and California who were tested daily with a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test using saliva and a rapid antigen test using nasal swabs. Researchers found all the antigen tests produced false-negative results, and in 28 of the 30 people their viral loads were high enough to infect other people.
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