That has led to speculation on social media that perhaps rapid tests have lost their ability to detect some of the newer coronavirus variants. “To date, the performance of currently marketed COVID-19 tests has not been adversely impacted by any new variants,” Merchak said in a statement. “That’s why the repeat testing 48 hours is so important.”Why rapid tests are often negative in kidsAnother real-world study of rapid tests identified another reason the tests sometimes don’t work well: operator error. In this study, negative rapid tests correctly meant that a child was healthy only 38% of the time. PCR tests showed that the infected kids had viral loads that should have been high enough to turn positive on rapid tests.

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Persons: ”, Michael Mina, Mina, Todd Merchak, ” Merchak, ” Mina, won’t, “, Nathaniel Hafer, ” Hafer, Taiwan hadn’t, Dr, Sanjay Gupta, he’s Organizations: CNN, telltale, Twitter, National Institutes of Health, US Food and Drug Administration, Cell, RADx, FDA, CDC, University of Massachusetts, UMass Chan Medical, Rapid, CNN Health Locations: Taiwan