BinaxNow at home test and false positives?

[Anonymous]

DS1 had a mild headache this morning (disappeared in under 10 minutes without meds, but tested him in an abundance of caution). The rapid at home test was positive. Took him for a PCR but won't get those results back until tonight.

Anyone have any experience with at home rapids and false positives? Would love to hear they are very common and we can actually see the family that we haven't seen in 2 years next week.

[Anonymous]

It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

I believe this is true also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

Thank you. He actually seems to feel fine luckily. Although I think that makes him even more sad about missing school. He just got vaccinated last week too! We made it so close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

Thank you. He actually seems to feel fine luckily. Although I think that makes him even more sad about missing school. He just got vaccinated last week too! We made it so close.

I mean it's possible it's a false positive! I just don't know how likely. Anything is possible.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, not common.

[Anonymous]

He probably is positive. Keep us posted. They are fairly accurate.

[Anonymous]

All 3 times for me they were confirmed positives by pcr. One of my kids also just had small headache.

[Anonymous]

I think the false positive rate is around 10%. There was a good article about this recently - let me try to find it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone. The line was really dark and appeared immediately on the test, so it seemed pretty certain it was positive.

He is pretty sad that it might mess up his 2nd vaccine appointment (and I think will for sure push back his brother's).

[Anonymous]

Ugh we are dealing with this too and had to cancel Thanksgiving. Was an actual positive in my DH's case. I actually had a false negative on one of those. They are pretty specific. Hope you are lucky though, OP!

[Anonymous]

Here it is - it sounds like it's more like 2%

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/04/1024450/at-home-covid-test-review-accuracy-binaxnow-lucira-ellume/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

Thank you. He actually seems to feel fine luckily. Although I think that makes him even more sad about missing school. He just got vaccinated last week too! We made it so close.

It is so hard to miss all that school when your kid feels fine. Do you have other kids? If so, make sure you isolate your sick kid from them asap. Otherwise their quarantine won’t end until 10 days after your sick kids quarantine ends (assuming they don’t test positive). It took almost a month for our family to all get out of quarantine when covid slowly spread through our house earlier this fall. Also, we used the binax now tests. It was right for 3 out of 4 cases. Only one negative on an asymptotic person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not my understand that False positives are common - sorry. It's the false negatives that more common.

I hope your kiddo feels better.

Thank you. He actually seems to feel fine luckily. Although I think that makes him even more sad about missing school. He just got vaccinated last week too! We made it so close.

It is so hard to miss all that school when your kid feels fine. Do you have other kids? If so, make sure you isolate your sick kid from them asap. Otherwise their quarantine won’t end until 10 days after your sick kids quarantine ends (assuming they don’t test positive). It took almost a month for our family to all get out of quarantine when covid slowly spread through our house earlier this fall. Also, we used the binax now tests. It was right for 3 out of 4 cases. Only one negative on an asymptotic person.

He does have a brother, but I thought about this but wasn't sure if it was going to be possible. I mean that would mean DS1 would stay in his room the entire quarantine? Or they are just never in the same room. It feels impossible at the moment with our small house and I feel like he was already exposed before we even got the positive test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh we are dealing with this too and had to cancel Thanksgiving. Was an actual positive in my DH's case. I actually had a false negative on one of those. They are pretty specific. Hope you are lucky though, OP!

It sucks. Such rotten timing.