![]() ![]() The idea is to figure out when after an exposure people start showing symptoms, when their rapid tests turn positive - and which parts of the head have the most virus at different points in an infection. Lam's lab is testing coronavirus-positive patients and their families daily with both PCR and rapid tests, taking samples from their throats, noses and mouths. "And even though the virus may actually be living in the patient's nose, the immune system might already be fighting it off, such that the viral load at that point in time of testing is too low to be detectable on the test," he says.Īnother possibility is that omicron might be showing up in different parts of the head first, so while at-home rapid tests require a nose swab, it could be that the virus is more heavily concentrated in your throat and mouth. "This is all theoretical," Lam stresses, but one idea is that people who are vaccinated start fighting off the infection as soon as it occurs. To understand what is going on, Lam's lab is checking into several possibilities. Such reports are puzzling, because you would think that if you're sick enough to show symptoms, then the virus levels in your body would be high enough to register on a rapid test. His research team began evaluating rapid antigen tests against live samples of the omicron variant last December in the lab, and in early assessments, he says, some tests failed to detect the coronavirus "at a concentration that we would have expected them to catch it if it were another variant." Wilbur Lam, a professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering at Emory University and one of the lead investigators assessing COVID-19 diagnostic tests for the federal government. ![]() Researchers are working fast to figure out what's going on and how to improve the tests. How much should you trust the results of a rapid antigen test? That's a question many people are asking these days amid recent research and anecdotes suggesting these tests may be less sensitive to omicron. But how accurate are they? Scientists are trying to find out whether they are less sensitive to omicron and why. Rapid tests can help you figure out whether you have been infected with the coronavirus. ![]()
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