When is day 0 of you test positive on LFT?

[elelel]

Is it the day you get the positive LFT or the day you get the positive PCR - which at the moment could take longer then normal, or the day you take the PCR?

Just pondering as we have a positive LFT this evening

Positive LFT

Excellent thank you

If you have symptoms, day zero is the day symptoms start.

If no symptoms I would consider day zero the day of your positive lft. Not sure what official guidance but if you had done a pcr the same day it would almost definitely be positive. Plus with the struggles getting a pcr test at the minute...

We had this with Dd a few weeks ago. She tested positive on lft in the evening. Too late to get a pcr that day. She had no symptoms. So day zero was lft day!

Actually day of positive LFT is day 0, as you don’t know if you were positive all day, so day 1 is the day after positive LFT, the same applies to a positive PCR, day 0 is the date you get positive result, day 1 the day after.

But if symptoms start after positive LFT you restart the 10 days.

Depends on symptoms. Assuming you were asymptomatic if doing an LFT, so the count starts from the day following administration of a positive PCR test.

For me it was taken from pcr result.

It's either from first day of symptoms or the day you take the PCR test. (they don't count the LFT at all) but just tell test and trace you had symptoms on the LFT positive day.

I had a sore throat a couple of days before my positive LfT, but classes day 0 as the day of the positive LfT. I’m on day 8 now and still have a strong line so I’m not going anywhere’

pass the cake - your day 0 is the day your sore throat started as you had symptoms. The day you took the test is day 0 for those who dont have symptoms.

In theory if you had symptoms on monday and couldn't get pcr for several days then you can be out of isolation almost immediately

DS tested positive on a LTF on the 15th. His symptoms started and he had a positive PCR on the 16th.

The 16th was his day 0.

I started with symptoms on 24th December, but only tested positive on a LFT on 1st January - at which point I had no symptoms anymore.

I thought the T&T form would allow me to record what symptoms I previously had, but it didn’t, and wouldn’t let me change the form, so it now has me down as having to isolate until 11th January.

I’m now giving a strong +ve on LFTs, so am going to self-isolate until the LFT tests go negative. At that point, I shouldn’t be infectious and should be safe to leave self-isolation.

As I’ve already been isolating for nearly a fortnight with symptoms, I’m certainly not self-isolating unnecessarily for a further 10 days! If someone wants to prosecute me, they can take it up with my GP.

The T.&t form specifically asks 1) if you have symptoms 2) what date your symptoms started

It makes it very clear that isolation will be calculated by the date you say your symptoms started

So if someone’s date started from pcr then they must have said no to the symptoms question

@Londonwriter

When did you get your PCR?

@Watapalava

The T.&t form specifically asks 1) if you have symptoms 2) what date your symptoms started

It makes it very clear that isolation will be calculated by the date you say your symptoms started

So if someone’s date started from pcr then they must have said no to the symptoms question

They asked ‘what symptoms are you having’, not ‘what symptoms were you having several days ago’. Thus, it went by the PCR, with the assumption that I had not yet begun with symptoms.

I am currently asymptomatic - I’m slightly tired. Over the eight days before I tested positive, I had a dry cough, nausea, dry eyes, itching, sore throat, sinus pain, a fever, mouth ulcers…

I hadn’t bothered getting a PCR because we were already self-isolating as my DH had tested positive before Xmas - so I knew my symptoms were omicron, even though it wasn’t showing up on the LFTs. The problem was that, shortly before I became asymptomatic, I started getting chest pains and my dry cough got worse, so I got scared that I might need medical attention or develop lung damage. Thus, I sought a confirmatory PCR to prove I’d also been infected.

A day later, all my symptoms vanished… I’m now just a bit tired.

Mine definitely asked if I had symptoms and when they started

It asked me several times to confirm date and that I wouldn’t be able to change it later

My symptoms started four days earlier and my isolation was calculated from that date

Yes, but it asked if you ‘had’ symptoms (present tense), not if you’d ‘had’ symptoms (past tense).

I asked my DH, who’d already filled in the form, if I should backdate to when my symptoms started, which was 24th December, and he said there was a second page about past symptoms. There… wasn’t.

Ultimately, no one is going to come around and check and, if they do, they can take up the functioning of my non-standard immune system with my GP. In the meantime, I’m going to work to prevent infection by daily LFTing until I get two negatives - that’s a far better indication of when I cease to be infectious than a poorly-completed form.