If you've done a lateral flow test

[catwomanhatwoman]

A) Have you or a family member had a false negative? (my son has)

B) Have you have had a positive result?

C) If you have had a positive result was it clearly positive before the 30 mins it says to wait to read the result?

False positives (confirmed by PCR) and friends/colleagues have all had positives come up before the 30 mins. It’s a bit like a pregnancy test in that you have to allow a certain time but the positive line tends to come up long before that.

I took 3 tests a week August-March, and 4 each week since then.

All negative. They’re a combination of PCR and LFT so I can be sure the LFT result is always accurate.

@RaelImperialAerosolKid

Mine was faint positive within a minute - got darker within 3 minutes - despite me shouting no repeatedly

Sorry you got a positive but this made me chuckle

Been doing them since January. Got 3 negatives and then a positive, which showed up clearly before the 30 minutes.

Having said that, our organisation was testing twice weekly from January. In our area, at one point, it was said that 1 in 30 people in our area had Covid. We are a staff of 80 and not one person ever (and still haven't) come up with a positive apart from me. The medical staff who were carrying out the tests couldn't believe it and expressed a concern that maybe some negatives were false.

My DP had a positive lateral flow. Took about 20 mins to show faint positive. Confirmed with pcr. DS and I did one out of curiosity a few days later and mine was also a very faint positive after around half an hour. DS was a very strong, clear positive after about a minute! We got very mild symptoms

All negatives so far

None of those are true for me. But yes have done tests.

A) all negatives in this household, no-one has become even slightly symptomatic (nor been near any confirmed cases) so we have no reason to think they were false negatives. Our surge testing area PCRs were negative too

B) no

C) n/a

(but I've just done one 10 mins ago ahead of return tomorrow, so I hope I've not just tempted fate with this post!)

All negatives for us so far.

I too have worked in a testing centre. The false positive rate is 1 in 1000.

This tends to become a problem only when you have really low rates of community transmission.

So if they rolled them out in Australia for instance and sent them to every household and say one third of the population decided to do it just for fun, so around 10 million people.

They would have 10,000 false "positives", which over there would cause mega panic.

Over here with plenty of community transmission still out there we will have more false negatives than false positives.

They still do a reasonable job of picking up asymptomatic true positives, at a time where it gives them an opportunity to self isolate and potentially save themselves from passing it to several more people.

Pregnancy tests have false positives. Test enough men and you'll get a positive.

Anyhoo, my daughter had one at school. LFT: positive, second LFT negative, PCR negative, back to school (took about 48h quarantine in the San which she was unimpressed with but at least she wasn't alone: there were 3 in her situ)

A. Tested negative on a lf the same day as the positive pcr.

all lfs have been negative.

Yes, my ds had the faintest whisper of a line that came up after 45 min, noticed it just as I was about to chuck them out, and only in comparison to the clear negative tests from the rest of us. Redid it and read at 30 min; completely negative. Got picked up as positive for covid (with mild cold symptoms, but not of the 3 pcr testable symptoms) by monthly ONS survey a few days later.

We've had a positive result - was faint positive within about 7 mins and got a bit darker. Did another and same thing. PCR later that day was also positive.

Don't think we've had a false negative but obvs hard to know. When DH had the positive lateral flow the rest of us had negative laterals. All negative PCRs when checked too.

Should say - we both test twice weekly as routine here which is how we found the positive

We've all been doing 2 a week for 2 months. All negative so far.

We've done approx 30 LFT's over the last few weeks. All negative.

Many done over the last few months and no symptoms for any of us and all negative tests.

Not much faith in them in this household
We both been doing them twice a week for work and now DD for school

When DH and I had definite, very symptomatic PCR confirmed Covid our LF tests still continued resoundingly negative throughout (carried on out of interest)

Some people at work have had real positives and it has been worthwhile because they were able to isolate a few days early and stop spread. However the vast majority of people who got it in our work outbreaks were the same as me and all their tests just continued negative despite having it.

I don't know anyone with a positive LF who didn't then go on to have it PCR confirmed.

Husband and I both do weekly LF (he does twice weekly) and all negative so far.
I'm absolutely full of cold so will do one later and hoping for a negative 🤞

@whatswithtodaytoday

My friend tested negative on the same day her husband tested positive - was positive for her the next day (and confirmed by PCR).

That could be correct though if she was a day behind her husband in developing the disease.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

Not much faith in them in this household We both been doing them twice a week for work and now DD for school

When DH and I had definite, very symptomatic PCR confirmed Covid our LF tests still continued resoundingly negative throughout (carried on out of interest)

Some people at work have had real positives and it has been worthwhile because they were able to isolate a few days early and stop spread. However the vast majority of people who got it in our work outbreaks were the same as me and all their tests just continued negative despite having it.

I don't know anyone with a positive LF who didn't then go on to have it PCR confirmed.

If you had symptoms you needed a PCR test. Lateral flow are not to be used on symptomatic people.

And I actually said right in my post that you've quoted that we got PCRs and we just carried on the routine lateral flows we were doing for work anyway for interest because you would have thought they would also be positive wouldn't you?

If you had symptoms and had LFTs in the house and you were waiting your PCR to come back would you not take one?

I posted this because it's really the only way to answer the OPs question because if you don't also have a PCR then how will you know if your LFT was false positive or false negative as you'd have nothing to compare.

We self isolated because of having symptoms and did not go out just because the LFTs were negative.
No risks were taken or rules broken
Nothing to see here. Please move along Covid police.