Further information on lateral flow tests

[irene75359]

I am writing a separate post as I thought the information my son-in-law sent was worth sharing. My daughter, her husband and my grandson had COVID last week (adults triple-vaccinated), all recovering well. Our family WhatsApp group has been busy as we are all desperately wanting to spend Christmas together so lateral flow tests are being used daily.

This London doctor talks about his experiences using LFTs. He has an open profile on Instagram so you can read his findings for yourself.

instagram.com/p/CXd5LZRgmC9/

If you get a screenshot where you can't read all of the text, click on 'Expedition doctor' (his user name) and it will take you to his account.

In a nutshell it appears when doing an LFT test a throat swab is more accurate; anecdotal only but really interesting. So are the rest of his posts from the frontline in the fight against COVID.

[BobD Volunteer]

Interestingly the only test I had to do (to see my osteopath) I was so ignorant as to do throat anyway. It was of course negative. I do believe from anecdotal evidence that these tests will usually be negative if you have no symptoms anyway as I know of nobody who has shown positive when they have no symptoms. Similarly my son who has had a stinking cold for two weeks has had 12 negative LFTs as did his brother a fortnight ago.

[Ppiman]

Thanks for the link - and wasn't it interesting to read this doctor's experiences? The new test kit we use said nasal only, so we didn't try it with the throat. I would have had I read this first. I used one last week as I've had a "proper cold" for while (still very sniffly) but it was negative and, as I'd had no temperature at all, I did feel that it wasn’t likely to be covid, even though there's a lot of it in our local schools.

I hope you manage your Christmas get together!

Steve

[irene75359 in reply to Ppiman]

Thank you - it looks as though we might scrape through, the COVID branch are half testing negative!

[Ppiman]

To think that my brother and his wife are risking not having it. I don’t know. It takes all sorts to make a world. 🙄

Steve

[irene75359 in reply to Ppiman]

I understand only too well! My lovely son-in-law's brother, who lives on his own, became very shirty when asked to do a LFT before coming to our house for Christmas (I am immunosuppressed because of chemo) and in the end flatly refused as he has bad nose bleeds apparently. He thinks the whole rigmarole is ridiculous, and the conversation ended with his brother telling him outright that he can't come.

[Ppiman in reply to irene75359]

It’s tragic that quite a largish number in society has come to this decision - although most vaccine hesitancy is from minority cultural or religious groups.

I hope you enjoy your Christmas get together and that your treatment is doing what it should and more. Life can be tough.

Steve