"She's fine, we've done a lateral flow"

[Happymchappy]

I just wondered if anyone else is coming across this more and more amongst parents at school. The vast majority of people I chat to seem to be relying heavily on lateral flows these days - less so PCRs for close contacts, coughs etc.
I'm just intrigued how common this is more widely?
I'm sure if a child was visibly ill with symptoms the school would send them home and they'd get a PCR then - I've come across it more in social interactions like playdates etc.

@Cookerhood

I wish people would say LFTs are only for symptom free. Of course they will pick up a symptomatic infection. How do you think they work? They detected the virus antigen which doesn't go away as soon as you get symptoms. The point was that they were a useful, cheap blunt instrument to pick up symptomless cases that would otherwise go undetected & therefore protect the population as a whole. THEY WILL WORK ON SYMPTOMATIC INFECTIONS. They may not be as accurate as PCR but are good enough (& better than perhaps thought before). A false positive is extremely unlikely (false negative more so).

Absolutely.. It's the same with the nonsense that LFTs don't work on children under 11!? Some people just have to take things so literally and incapable of applying any common sense.