It’s all too easy to forget about COVID on hot, summer days, but the virus is still here and continuing to infect people, hospitalize folks and even cause death.
“We are expecting a surge in cases as the summer progresses, too,” said Dr. Mark Loafman, a family physician in Chicago. “Most places are starting to see more COVID in wastewater testing and starting to see more positives in their labs, so that’s coming as well,” Loafman added.
As such, it’s as important as ever to test yourself. Many folks have COVID tests at home, whether from the government, from loved ones or from the local pharmacy, but do these at-home tests still detect the latest COVID variants? Here’s what experts want you to know:
Yes. COVID tests can still detect the latest variants.
All three experts told HuffPost that at-home COVID tests are able to detect the COVID variants infecting people now.
“The tests are designed against the part of the virus that tends not to change much as the strains change,” said Dr. Sheldon Campbell, a professor of laboratory medicine at Yale School of Medicine.
Meaning, while the virus’ spike protein changes to make it more and more transmissible, another part of the virus, the nucleocapsid, largely stays the same — and this is the part of the virus that most at-home COVID tests were designed to monitor, said Campbell.
The circulating variants are all part of the omicron family of viruses, added Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine in the department of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
The omicron variant has been in the U.S. since late 2021.
“So, the tests ought to work quite reasonably well,” Schaffner said.
Be sure to check the expiration date for your at-home tests.
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably had COVID tests sitting in your cabinet for months, if not years. Each product has an expiration date that you should check, but some of those expiration dates have been extended, noted Loafman.
On the Food and Drug Administration’s website, you can find information on the shelf life of your at-home COVID tests.
It’s generally not recommended to use an expired test that hasn’t had its date extended, and Campbell said he wouldn’t officially recommend doing so.
Some experts say you can be a little more flexible with it, though. Schaffner said if the test has been stored in a space that isn’t too hot or isn’t too cold, it should be OK to use — “Now, I wouldn’t use the tests from four or five years ago, that I wouldn’t do, but for tests from a couple of years ago, sure, they ought to work,” Schaffner noted.
Loafman added that the tests don’t expire “at midnight on the date,” so, if the only test you have is expired and it’s only a few months out of date, it’s worth using.
But if you’re at high risk for complications from COVID or are visiting someone who is, it isn’t a great idea to use an old test. They may not be as accurate as in-date tests.
False negatives can happen, but that isn’t anything new.
Initially, the FDA required that COVID tests catch 80% of COVID infections in order to be FDA-approved, said Loafman — which means 20% of infections can go undetected.
When it comes to at-home COVID tests, there has always been an issue with false negatives, and that’s true today, too, Loafman said.
A negative result from a COVID test in a medical setting is more accurate than a negative result from an at-home test, Loafman added. The COVID tests done in medical settings are PCR tests, which are different than the at-home antigen tests, and are more sensitive to the virus.
If you do test negative via an at-home test but have COVID symptoms, you should take another at-home test 48 hours later to confirm your status, said Campbell.
Or, if you have COVID symptoms and want a guarantee that you don’t (or do) have COVID, you should go to a health care site and take a PCR test, Campbell added. This is also true for high-risk folks, those who’ve had an exposure and for those in an area with lots of COVID circulating, Campbell said.
“Then you probably want to go get a more sensitive test so you can not miss the diagnosis and potentially miss life-saving or health-saving treatment,” Campbell said.
If you need to be healthy to visit at-risk loved ones, you may want to opt for a PCR test, too.
“If you’ve got a 90-year-old mom you’re thinking of visiting, I’m not sure I’d necessarily use an antigen test two days before you go to make that decision,” said Campbell.
If you are high risk and test positive, let your doctor know so you can get treatment.
Folks should be testing, whether they’re high risk or not, but it’s particularly important for high-risk people to get tested for COVID (and for anyone around high-risk folks to do the same).
High-risk folks include those over 65, people younger than 65 with chronic medical conditions and pregnant people, said Schaffner.
“Those are the people who are at greatest risk, should they have COVID, of developing more serious illness,” Schaffner explained.
“The sooner and more precisely we diagnose their respiratory illness, if it is COVID, we can give them some treatment that will prevent this evolution into something that will take them into the hospital,” he said.
If you do test positive and are high risk, contact your health care provider immediately, Schaffner said. They’ll be able to get you proper treatment.
Beyond treatment when you’re sick, it’s important to do all that you can to stay well, too.
“We all know that the fall is coming. Let’s make sure, particularly, everyone in a high-risk group takes advantage of the updated vaccine, which will be available this fall,” Schaffner said.