“You can get false positives, especially in low prevalence settings.” Meaning, if you test positive for COVID-19 with a home test, you don’t have symptoms of the virus, there isn’t a lot of the virus circulating in your community, and you’re fully vaccinated, you should give the results the side-eye and follow them up with a PCR test. “The problem with these tests is that their specificity is not as good as a PCR test,” he says. What to know about false positive results But, if you don’t have symptoms of COVID-19 and are just testing to see if you have the virus before doing something like going to a wedding or visiting an elderly relative, there’s a higher chance you’ll get a false reading, says John Sellick, D.O., an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at the University at Buffalo/SUNY.

“If you have symptoms of a viral illness and your rapid test is positive, then consider yourself infected with COVID-19,” says Richard Watkins, M.D., an infectious disease physician and professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University. However, experts say, home tests are most effective under certain circumstances. InteliSwab says its test correctly identified 84% of positive samples in clinical trials, and 98% of negative samples. QuickVue says its test detects positive cases 83.5% of the time, and negative cases 99.2% of the time. These are some of the more common ones authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and available in pharmacies (though availability may vary depending on where you live):Įllume says its test offers 96% accuracy in detecting symptomatic cases of COVID-19 and a 91% accuracy in detecting asymptomatic cases.īinaxNow says its test detects 84.6% of positive COVID-19 cases and 98.5% of negative cases. At-home testing companies claim high rates of efficacy, though they report their internal data in different ways.

The gold standard continues to be PCR tests, which cannot be done at home, but experts say home COVID tests give pretty accurate results. Every home COVID test is slightly different, which is why the CDC recommends that you read the complete instructions before you start the test. Others require a saliva specimen, meaning you spit into a container so the fluid can be analyzed. Many tests have you take a nasal specimen using a swab, the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.

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