Just having the tests doesn't mean you're making the most of them
, and insurers are required to reimburse covered individuals for 8 tests per month, so people can stock up on them to use as needed. But exactly when are they needed? Should you test yourself before you travel? After? When you’re visiting a home with young, unvaccinated children? Before—or after—you attend a dinner party? At this point, there is no general agreement on when to use them.
What’s more, those results aren’t perfect, warns Michael Mina, former assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and now chief science officer at eMed, a home testing and treatment company. PCR tests, which look for genetic material from the coronavirus, can also produce a false negative if you have a low viral load at the time. If in doubt, isolating for at least five days—as the U.S.
Mina, who is the father of a baby girl who is currently unvaccinated, is rigorous about testing the family before traveling—especially if they are visiting other people in their homes. “If we’re going to be in someone’s house, we just don’t want to be the ones who are responsible for bringing COVID in,” he says.Pre-pandemic, no one thought much about the health implications of a dinner party, but now that’s changed.
Visiting the vulnerable—the immunocompromised, the elderly, or unvaccinated babies and small children—is another area in which the experts are in agreement about testing protocols. Mina’s parents are in their 70s and, like del Rio with his 87-year-old mother, he tests before visiting them. Briese tests before visiting anyone with any medical condition, even if he doesn’t know if the person is immunocompromised.
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