Positive lateral flow but negative PCR?

[JingleBeth]

Is this possible? What could it mean?

It happened a week ago but I’m still thinking about it. The previous week, I went out for my work Christmas and half my team started to feel unwell the following week (ie last week). I took a lateral flow and it had a very very faint line. It was 15 minutes after taking so definitely not an evap line.

We had no more vials left for me to retest but did have another test strip, so then I used that same vial on the second test strip and that also had a very very faint line.

Did a PCR the following morning which came back negative. LTFs and another PCR since have all been negative.

Just wondering what it meant. Would it have been a faulty test, or did I have a very small viral load which was gone by the following morning? My previous LTF before the questionable ones had been 6 days beforehand so nothing else to compare to.

I know it doesn’t matter now, but just wondering!

I had the same thing this week. Have been doing daily LFTs since DS tested positive last week. Had a faint positive LFT on Tuesday evening, did PCR Wednesday morning and received negative result yesterday evening.

False positive LFTs do happen.

I had the same thing when I had Covid a few months ago. After my initial PCR I went back and a few days later and tested positive.

I’d had the same symptoms a few times since Covid began and always had a negative PCR, although, it now looks like I have been infected multiple times.

I suspect in the first few days their aren’t enough germs in your system for the PCR to pick up on it.

A FAINT LINE is a called a weak positive. Still a positive and can still develop into serious illness. It took three PCR's before it showed positive "officially" for me.

Hmm worrying. My second PCR was 3 days after the first, and that was negative. Will keep doing lateral flows!

I suppose there are a number of explanations, were you regularly testing before the Christmas outing?

I’m wondering if you were actually asymptomatically infected and the faint LFT was a result of the tail end of an infection by the time you tested? It’s also possible that for whatever reason you cleared an infection incredibly quickly and it never really got a foothold.

My partner never tested positive on the lateral flow, but did on the PCR🤷🏼‍♀️I knew he had it as we all caught it during isolation..

How recently had you tested before you did the one with the faint positive?

I also think you may have been infected the week of your christmas do/week before, and that faint positive was the tail end of your infection.

I last tested on the Friday night before I went out for the Christmas party and on the Saturday afternoon before I met some friends for lunch. My next LTF was on the Thursday night, which is when I had the faint lines. So five days between the last negative LTF and the ones with the faint line.

I didn’t do any tests in between as that’s when DH and I started isolating (ie staying at home and avoiding contact with anyone else in the run up to Christmas as FIL’s dad is CEV so we didn’t want to risk any infection).

I mean FIL / DH’s dad!