Choice of lateral flow or PCR? Which would you choose?

[doorornottodoor]

We have this option for our teenagers going to Turkey. There’s not a huge amount difference in cost. Which would you choose? They’re both done at a testing centre near our house so that’s not an issue. Paranoid about a false positive!

Are they both ok with doing the throat swab bit of the PCR? If not I'd go for the LFT.

@Coffeey yes we’ve all had so many!

I'd go for the LFT as you'd know the results within half an hour rather than a nervous day of waiting.

@Coffeey

Are they both ok with doing the throat swab bit of the PCR? If not I'd go for the LFT.

Don't both do a throat swab?

NCTDN

Coffeey
Are they both ok with doing the throat swab bit of the PCR? If not I'd go for the LFT.

Don't both do a throat swab?

My recent delivery of LFTs are nose swab only.

We’re in turkey! We did the PCRs in the end just to be in the safe side. All good. Uploaded everything to Jet2 app and printed all the forms off. It was helpful having the printed ones.

I'd always do LFT as they're arguably more accurate at detecting a current infection. LFT won't pick up a case where you're over it & are no longer infectious, whereas PCR will. I work in health research. Last time I read up on this, the average person was infectious for 7 days from onset of symptoms, ie that's the period when live virus could be cultivated. No live virus could be cultivated beyond day 9 at the time of that review. This 7 day infectious period matched up nicely with the average duration of testing positive via LFT. However, the average person tested positive for 17 days via PCR. Thus, a lot of the positive PCR results come when the person is no longer infectious.
In addition, current UK results suggest LFT sensitivity is around 90% for the highly infectious , which compares well with PCR. So, for speed, convenience, cost, and avoiding false positives, LFT wins.

@Cornucopia55 really interesting post - thank you!