Lateral flow tests

[Mammaaof]

Hi my son was sent home from school yesterday with a sore throat, then last night developed a temp, and woken up with a cough today, but he does have a runny nose. We are booked for PCR test at 1pm we've done numerous lft in the last week and all negative even this morning. So has anyone had negative lft tests then tested positive a PCR? Sorry posting here for traffic as need a quick response x

DS had negative LFT last Thursday despite starting to have symptoms, and was positive on PCR

Yes, this happened to me. I thought I had a cold but was doing daily LFT’s, all negative. It wasn’t until someone mentioned the Delta variant symptoms are like a cold that I went and had a PCR which came back positive.

I think if you have symptoms it doesn't show as + on a LFT anyway. That's why you have to get a PCR.

FWIW, my DS developed a cough. First it was a runny nose. There is so much going about!
We got him tested at 10am Saturday and got the results by 2am on the Sunday morning. Really quick results.

I tested negative on LFTs for 4 days with cold symptoms before getting a positive PCR result (I was isolating anyway). LFTs give lots of false negatives unfortunately. They only pick it up if you've got a high viral load from what I understand. Much more rare to get a false positive on a LFT (unless you've had Covid within 90 days of testing).

Positive results will show on an LfT rig you have symptoms.
But not always.
They are not overly effective.
They pick up some asymptotic cases.

You can often get a positive pcr despite negative LFT. More so than the other way round.

Yup. -ve LFT the day before AND the day after my +ve PCR. LFT are notoriously unreliable.

I had 4 negative lfts, one the same day before a positive PCR .

Delta variant cold like symptoms here

I had a positive LFT with symptoms, positive PCR. DD neg, neg then pos LFT, positive PCR. DH neg LFT's including day of PCR, positive PCR. I think it's to do with the viral load and also technique. The PCR's must be more sensitive.

Yes. DS tested positive on LFT - no symptoms. Rest of household negative. All of us did PCR as a precaution - all tested positive on PCR taken same day.

Oh gosh 🙈I'm still hopeful it's a cold despite 6 children in his class testing positive. Just leaving for test now the results in my local area are taking less than 24 hours so will come back and update thank you x

Loads of people. The 2 test for different things.