Our office now offers rapid COVID testing !! These are nose swabs only, not the deep nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs. (We do those, too)
But, did you know that a rapid test is generally not used to confirm that you don't have COVID?
Here's the scoop: This rate of false positives is very low. This means that, if you have a positive result, we have confirmed that you have COVID. However the rate of false negatives is too high to rely on the result as a confirmation of NOT having COVID. Therefore, a negative rapid test is not a reason to come out of quarantine.
Negative rapid covid tests must then be confirmed by a deep NP swab sent to a local lab for analysis. This testing takes up to 72 hours for results. It's always my recommendation to self quarantine until these results are received.
I hope this helps you understand why we sometimes need to do two tests.
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