The best way to protect yourself from becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 is to stay up to date with vaccines, getting them booked in as soon as you’re eligible. How to protect yourself and others from COVIDĪlthough restrictions have lifted and testing is being scaled back, COVID is very much still with us. If you test negative, it’s unlikely you’re still infectious but it’s a good idea to do another confirmatory test the next day, if you can spare it.Īnd, of course, please make sure you log all your symptoms and test results, whether negative or positive, in the ZOE COVID Study app, so we can continue to track the pandemic as official testing and monitoring is scaled back. If you test positive after this period, you should wait another day or two before you test again. However, our analysis shows that it takes an average of 8 days after the first positive test for people to report a negative test. If you test positive, it’s recommended that you stay at home for at least five days, or until you feel well enough to carry on with your daily life. When rates of COVID are high, these symptoms are more likely to be caused by COVID than a cold, so you should do a test to be sure. You should do an LFT on the first day you notice cold-like symptoms that might be COVID, such as a cough, runny nose, fever, headache or feeling very tired. When should you test if you think you have COVID? We also recommend avoiding socializing with others until you’re symptom-free to avoid passing on whatever illness you do have, even if it’s not COVID. If you have symptoms that are highly consistent with COVID-19 but get a negative test result then it’s worth doing another one to confirm, if you can afford it. However, it’s important to remember that around one in five LFTs will be a false negative result, saying you don’t have COVID when you actually do. If you test negative, you probably don’t have COVID. You also don’t need a PCR test to confirm it. These results tell us that if you get a positive result on an LFT, you most likely have COVID. This table shows the sensitivity and specificity of tests for the most recent variants, Delta and Omicron. Specificity: how well the test correctly identifies people without COVID - the more specific the test, the lower the chance of a false positive result (saying you do have COVID when you don't) Sensitivity: how well the test correctly identifies people with COVID - the more sensitive the test, the lower the chance of a false negative result (saying you don't have COVID when you do) We calculate test accuracy based on two measures: Our initial analysis of almost 100,000 test results reported in the ZOE app shows that home-based lateral flow tests (LFTs) are very good at detecting COVID-19. How effective are COVID home testing kits? Given that most of us will now have to buy our own COVID tests once we’ve run out of government stocks, we’ve been analyzing data from millions of health reports and test results submitted by our ZOE COVID Study contributors to figure out how to make the most of them as we move forward. We are also no longer able to offer PCR tests through the ZOE COVID Study.Ī lack of federal funding for COVID measures means that widespread free testing may also come to an end in the US too. In the UK, free lateral flow tests (LFTs, also known as rapid antigen tests or RATs) are no longer available in England, with exceptions for healthcare workers and people at high risk, with the other nations of the UK due to follow. How is COVID testing changing?Īs we move into the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, access to free tests is changing. Here’s how to make the most of any tests you do have, to help protect those around you. Although rates of COVID are still high in many places, access to free COVID testing is being dramatically scaled back.
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