Lateral flow on kids - how accurate?

[Bellybutton88]

Hi, when i test my young kids aged 5 and 6 on LFT they are very reluctant and I simply cannot get to the back of the nose. Just wondered how accurate LFT are when testing young children because of the difficulty of getting to the back of their nose?

My friend suggested just sampling their snot

The instructions are to blow your nose prior to swabbing so the swab collects cells rather than snot so, presumably, it wouldn’t be accurate at all if you just tested snot. Maybe someone scientific could clarify?

The principle is to collect respiratory cells infected by the virus

I don't think the stick has to go as far up as as you do a PCR. Try it with them doing it themselves. Use bribery and tell them to just clean their nostrils inside/pick their nose with the stick. Mine now do the test themselves and we had an obvious positive from that a few weeks ago. Definitely don't use snot as it can make a test void I think.

Snot isn’t what you want to collect, you need the cells from back of throat/nose.

I’ve given up doing LFTs on my 5 year old, unless really really essential. If they have symptoms I’ll go to a pcr test site where a nurse does the sample - they cope much better with that. But I’m not testing them just for the sake of it now, but we had COVID in the house a month ago, and I’ll test my older child.

I got a very clear positive from my 4 year old and I didn’t get it very far up his nostrils at all

Why are you doing LFT on them that young? If they have symptoms I'd get a PCR booked.

Got a clear positive from a 4 year old who didn’t tolerate the swab v well (only 1 sec at a time, so had to try a few times in each nostril). It didn’t go that far in.

4 year old was asymptomatic. We were testing prior to visiting relatives.

What lateral flows do you have? We have had flowflex for ages (through the post) & it’s nose only & 2/3cm up, which isn’t far. I barely put mine up my nose when I had covid as my nose was so sore! and it was a glaring positive.

My six year old produced a very clear positive when he had covid and I didn’t put the swab very high up inside the nose.

When I was positive I did a LTF literally around the very edge of my nostril, just out or curiosity to see if I could get away with my less invasive when swabbing my DD4. It was as blazing positive as the one done higher up. I think if covid is present it’ll pretty much still pick it up.

My 5 year old is much more tolerant when doing them herself. Her positive came up very clearly.

I was regularly testing Dd after Dp got covid. She hated swabs but I tried my best. She got a positive on literally a couple seconds in each nostril and not even that far up.

Dp tried similar on himself. He did a very short swab just inside his nostrils when he knew he had covid and it still came up positive. He also tried the inside of his cheeks but that came back negative. I know this sounds like a waste of tests but we were struggling to get Ds who's autistic to swab so we were seeing now thorough they were if we couldn't swab Ds for long enough or that far up the nose.

I struggled to test my 6 year old but when she had it she came up positive on both lft and pcr so worked .

@covetingthepreciousthings

Why are you doing LFT on them that young? If they have symptoms I'd get a PCR booked.

I tested my 8 year old as I had symptoms (and did a PCR) and I figured I might have got it from him!

I didn’t get far with the swap and he was an instant positive.

@covetingthepreciousthings

Why are you doing LFT on them that young? If they have symptoms I'd get a PCR booked.

My 4 year old was not symptomatic. I tested all of us before we were due to travel to see my family for Christmas. Very glad I did as his symptoms didn’t develop until the following day when we would have already been there mixing with everyone including my clinically vulnerable mum.