Negative test - but all the symptoms?

[BBCONEANDTWO]

My friend who is a charge nurse had all the symptoms, cough, sore throat, fever, loss of taste etc. She had the test done yesterday and had the results back as negative. She said they didn't put the swab down her throat very far and is convinced that she is deffo positive. Anyone had a false negative.

I am an HCP and had all the symptoms at the start of April , terrible fatigue, aches and pains, gastric problems, temp, worse cough, extra wheezing ( asthmatic ) what looked like covid toe . My test on day 9 was negative, I was quite surprised but my temp was down by then . I'll be having the antibody test soon . If I had it , it was extremely mild.

It is a bit scary if she's actually got it and might be still infectious. I wonder if that's why there is still sometimes a spread in the hospital/care homes.

There was a very interesting article in the BMJ recently talking about this exact point. Someone who has the symptoms and has been exposed (they used an example of a 52 year old doctor) but has a negative test still has a probability of having covid of 74% because of the high Pre-test probability and the rate of false negatives. The insistence of HCPs and care workers returning to work with symptoms highly suggestive of covid because they’ve had a negative test is absurd and, IMO, downright negligent.

I think this is the BMJ article you are referring to @norkmonster

Here are the take home messages from it:

No test is 100% accurate.
If your swab test comes back positive for covid-19 then we can be very confident that you do have covid-19.
However, people with covid-19 can be missed by these swab tests. If you have strong symptoms of covid-19, it is safest to self-isolate, even if the swab test does not show covid-19

I had this. Cough, temperature, loss of smell, fatigue. Test case back negative 🤷‍♀️
Maybe it was hay fever but didn't feel like it.