Covid testing - Are there many false negatives?

[Janevaljane]

dd shares a house with her bf and four others. They were all tested yesterday and got results today (Wales!). All positive, apart from dd! They are all isolating including her. How on earth is she negative!

False negatives can happen. Is your dd feeling ill? If not, she may truly have swerved it or may be incubating it. Fingers crossed it's the former.

No not at all ill. We both had a "weird flu" in February which was exactly as CV is described- maybe she's immune!!

Maybe she's still incubating it or whatever the term is.
For most of these tests it's a trade off between false positives and false negatives. I think false positives are more prevalent at the moment (for good reason - a few people self isolating when they technically didn't need to vs a few people out and about thinking they haven't got it)

She's going to retest in a week. Would that be long enough to 'incubate' it?

There's a less than 50% cross infection rate within households so she won't necessarily get it.

Really? Even though she's sleeping with her boyfriend and cooking with all the others?

Having done a test on dd as part of a study I can see how it would be easy to not get enough of a sample to give a positive test result-found it v difficult to get the swab right the back of her throat so I imagine plenty of people aren’t doing it properly

She did it at a drive through under supervision. That had occurred to me though.

Surely she shouldn't be testing with out symptoms, how did she answer that question

No idea. They did it whatever.

Why is she wasting tests?

She's wasting tests because she's negative? If she was positive, like the rest of her household, would that be a waste?

She should only test when she has symptoms.
Also since one of them has tested positive they all have to isolate for ten or 14 days - how does her also having a test help?

Or did she have symptoms? If so apologies

I know a household who tested positive recently - except the only person with any symptoms was negative

When you book a cv test there is an option to add other members of your household and all get tested together. My step brothers family have just been done after one son got sick - 3 positive, 2 negative.

She should only test when she has symptoms thanks for the advice. I guess the Welsh health service were fine about it.

When you book a cv test there is an option to add other members of your household and all get tested together

Well there you go.

@Porcupineinwaiting

When you book a cv test there is an option to add other members of your household and all get tested together. My step brothers family have just been done after one son got sick - 3 positive, 2 negative.

Yes but only if they have symptoms!!

If they have symptoms!
But you're absolutely right op I'm only talking about England.

Yeah think its different there, they seem very efficient, results back in 22 hours!

For England the rules are very clear.
Good to hear results are coming back quickly. Up here in NE England dd has had two tests, one back in 19 hours and the second, today, was almost exactly 24h. Quite impressed.

For Wales the rules are also clear. Do not get a test unless you have one or more of the three symptoms.

I'm sure they wouldn't have done it if she had broken the rules in any way. Take it up with NHS Wales if you have an issue with it.

It’s my understanding that if the swab doesn’t pick up enough of whatever it needs to pick up the result comes back as inconclusive rather than negative. Hopefully it’s a true negative and she doesn’t have it. I think a lot of people don’t actually infect anyone else - it’s just that a few people infect loads so the “r” average is a bit misleading.