As Monadnock Region residents prepare for holiday gatherings and travel, many are stocking up on at-home COVID-19 tests to ensure they do so safely.
Here’s a rundown of where to buy the tests, how effective they are, when they should be used and what to do after getting the result:
More than 60 at-home COVID-19 tests have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration since last winter.
Most can be purchased without a prescription at local pharmacies or major retailers like Walmart, including the Abbott BinaxNOW, the Ellume Covid-19 Home Test and the Quidel QuickVue At-Home Covid-19 Test.
Prices range from about $10 to $40 per test, though President Joe Biden announced recently that Americans can get reimbursed by private insurers for that cost.
New Hampshire last week became the first state to offer free tests to its residents while supplies lasted through the state health department’s website.
The at-home COVID-19 tests are rapid tests, also known as antigen tests, with most requiring the person to swab about a half inch inside both nostrils.
The tests use the mucus sample to reveal whether a person is currently infected with COVID-19 by detecting certain proteins of the virus that causes it.
People with and without symptoms can use the tests, though the tests are more sensitive with the former.
The tests can be used on anyone 2 years-old and up, though only teenagers and adults are advised to test themselves.
All the tests are “pretty much the same” in terms of accuracy, according to Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
Like other rapid tests, at-home tests are less accurate than the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and since they’re done outside a medical setting, they’re also more prone to user error.
Most at-home tests have an overall sensitivity of about 85 percent, meaning they are catching roughly 85 percent of people who are infected with the virus, according to various news reports.
Because of this, Schaffner said a negative test result should be followed up — if possible — with a PCR test, the most effective kind available.
False negatives occur with the rapid tests because they are less sensitive than a PCR, Schaffner explained.
“If your test is positive, you can pretty much rely on that as a positive result,” he said. “But if it’s negative … if we just have a small amount of virus in our noses, then the test can read negative, even if there is virus in our nose.”
Though they are less accurate, the benefit of these tests is how quickly they can determine — with a reasonable degree of accuracy — if a patient is positive or negative for COVID-19. This is especially important for those who need to return to work or school the same day or ahead of holiday gatherings.
At-home tests will yield a result within 15 minutes, compared to waiting up to 48 hours for a PCR test result.
If using the tests for holiday events, Schaffner said, the test should be conducted within 24 hours of the gathering.
Dr. Aalok Khole, an infectious disease physician at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, added that getting tested is not a substitute for other safety protocols, like getting the COVID-19 vaccine, masking in public or frequent hand-washing.
“It is one of the mitigation measures that an individual can use,” he said in an email. “However … it should not be used as a ‘free pass’ to let go of the other mitigation measures.”
Upon receiving a positive test result, you should begin quarantining immediately and contact your health care provider, according to Khole and Schaffner.
Your physician may want to have a PCR test done to confirm the positive result, the doctors said. And if you’re at high risk of developing severe complications — if you’re older than 65 or have a pre-existing condition, for example — you may need additional treatment to prevent a more serious infection from developing.
People should not go to the emergency department unless they are having trouble breathing or experience another life-threatening complication, according to Khole, as to not further overwhelm hospitals with COVID-19 patients.
For more information on at-home COVID-19 tests, including video tutorials of how to use them, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website at bit.ly/cdcathometests.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.