What percentage of the free covid test kits from the US government do you think will go to waste?
Asked by
JLeslie (
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February 6th, 2022
from iPhone
You probably know the story regarding Florida having a million test kits stockpiled that went past the expiration date. I’m not sure how many were originally ordered or why they weren’t being given away in larger numbers. From what I understand Florida received approval to use them past the expiration date, I have no idea how many have been used from that bunch.
More recently Americans could order through the mail 4 free tests for free with the fed footing the bill. Many people have started receiving them. How many of those tests do you think will never get used? Do you think there was a better way to encourage more testing? Do you know how much the fed paid per kit? Each kit has two tests.
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^^Your guess is as good as mine. I think a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s half. There should be a plan for giving them to local health departments when they are within a month of expiration for immediate use. A swap for a new kit or just turning them in.
What’s the news story going to be?
Still waiting for mine to arrive.
Rapid tests, which are what the home tests kits are, are not very accurate. The PCR tests are the best way to indicate whether or not you have covid. The rapid tests often (wrongly) give a false negative, even when a PCR test done on the same day gives a positive reading.
This is a huge problem because asymptomatic people are walking around spreading covid and thinking they are negative.
Here is more info on that subject:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/01/23/1074978193/rapid-covid-tests-omicron
@Kardamom That doesn’t really answer the question.
I know the difference between antigen tests and PCR tests.
Well, in my case, I wouldn’t bother to use it, even though I have 2 of them, so I imagine other people who need real results, despite having possession of the rapid tests, also won’t use them. Hence, they will go to waste.
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I guess it depends on how the results would be viewed. The example I am thinking of is my work policy. If someone gets sick, we send them for a Covid test. If they take a home test, that is fine, except it doesn’t meet the demands of the policy. So home tests become meaningless. If something is meaningless, it doesn’t get used much. I would think there would still be a lot of scared people that would use them as often as possible to make sure they don’t have Covid.
I don’t consider an unused test a waste.
So that would be zero.
I received my 4 free gov’t tests today. The package says “the test is more likely to give you a false negative when you have Covid-19 than a lab-based molecular test”.
I would rather have a false positive. My primary concern is to be clean when I visit my mother in old folks assisted living. I don’t want to the one to wipe out the residents.
Pondering what to do with these things. I am inclined to give them away on freecycle.org.
^^Almost every test kit that is trying to detect something is more likely to give a false negative than a false positive. Covid test, pregnancy test, if you test too early or take a bad sample it will come up negative.
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