WILBUR LAM: When patients come in and they have symptoms, we test them against the gold standard PCR test, and then we test with the rapid tests. But in the clinical setting - the real-world setting - he says, these tests, they work. So in other words, they didn't detect the virus at lower concentrations where they would have expected to catch it with other variants. He says in the lab, they found that some rapid antigen tests do seem to be less sensitive with omicron. And he's one of the lead investigators assessing COVID-19 tests for the government. He's a physician and biomedical engineer at Emory University. And the bottom line is this - rapid antigen tests are a very useful tool, but they aren't perfect. GODOY: Well, you know, there's been several studies out recently looking at this, both in the lab and in the real world. Hey, Maria.ĬHANG: So what does the latest research say about the accuracy of these tests? Well, we have asked NPR's health correspondent Maria Godoy to help answer some of these lingering questions, and she joins us now. Still, there have been questions about the accuracy of these at-home antigen tests, especially when it comes to detecting the omicron variant. Now, rapid tests have not been easy to find in recent months, just as schools and businesses are relying more on them. Each home is allowed to order four test kits, and millions have already visited the site. The federal government's website offering free COVID-19 rapid tests officially launched today.
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