Reply to Did your child test positive or negative on the rapid test?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For all those with partially negative partially positive families - it is more common than you think.  [b] In the beginning of the pandemic, before vaccines, [/b] we had one positive child and one positive parent.  The other parent and child were definitely exposed but never got sick.  In retrospect, it is clear that the infected child and parent had the closest contact at a critical time. (Pre-symptomatic unmasked car ride together in the 12 hours before 1st symptoms.).

Infected parent slept in same bed with non-infected partner (divorced family) prior to becoming symptomatic and testing positive. Partner never was infected.

What our experience showed me was that household transmission is not a given.  I think a lot depends on viral dose exposure (so masking, distance and ventilation helped) and degree of close exposure when someone around you is shedding highly.

We had a second exposure post-vaccination. The infected (and fully vaccinated but pre-boosted stage) person had close contact with a family member who was asymptomatic but infected.

Rapid false negatives are possible because you can be infected with the virus which has not replicated yet to sufficient levels to trigger the rapid positive, but rapid false positives are extremely unlikely, especially in a high prevalence environment. [/quote]

Don't forget, though, that those earlier strains of the virus were less transmissible than Omicron, or even Delta. If one kid tests positive on a rapid test, people need to keep testing the other family members every couple of days. More recent anecdotes suggest most of the time the rest of the family won't be too far behind, even if they're vaccinated.

And yeah, I hate that term "false negative," because it doesn't necessarily mean the test is defective or anything, it just means you're not infectious enough for that type of test to pick it up yet. "False positives" is probably accurate, though, because those are usually due to contamination of the sample.[/quote]

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