Why can’t you use No Symptom test on people with symptoms?

[Standrewsschool]

I’ve seen lots in the news about the No Symptom test. Why can’t people with symptoms have these tests also?

Do you mean the lateral flow test ?

It's not a "no symptom" test. It is being used in some places eg. NHS workers to pick up asymptomatic infections but would work equally for those with symptoms.

Because they get a lot of false negatives.

So if you are doing population screening, and getting a positive test is a bonus, that's not so bad.

But if you used them on people with symptoms who were highly likely to be infected, then you would miss a lot of cases, which you don't want to do.

It's the lateral flow test which is far less accurate. If you get a positive result from this I thought you then had to have it confirmed with the more accurate PCR test. Is that not the case now?

Because it's a waste of a test, maybe?

We use them at work, but positive results need to then be confirmed by a PCR test, because they are not accurate enough.

So you would be pointlessly doing two tests when only one is needed.

As people said above, false negatives.

It's also because of administering them. We had local asymptomatic testing in a shopping centre while it was open to the general public (prelockdown). Would not have been a place you would want to gather people with symptoms.

I’m assuming that the location of the testing centres would maybe be an issue?
Our covid testing site for those with symptoms is a drive in site located in grounds of a (currently) unused hotel. We have a lateral flow testing centre in the our council run leisure centre, on the high street. Having people travel there for testing would be contradictory to the guidelines to isolate if you have symptoms, and would mean coming into contact with potentially a lot more people.

Sorry, crossed posts with Solidaritea who said pretty much the exact same thing!

So it Gives ‘false negatives’. What percentage? I guess that defeats the object. A ‘false positive’ wouldn’t be so bad, because then you can have the second, different test to confirm the result. However, with a false negative, you’re actually non the wiser, unless you also have the second test.