What's the general feeling on the accuracy of LFTs? We've had covid in the house in the last few days, and I've had symptoms since yesterday (temperature, cough, couple of other things) but I've tried 3 LFTs now and they are all coming up negative.
If it was just one test I would have assumed it is a false negative, but would that happen for 3 separate tests? Or is that how the false negatives work i.e. if one test is a false negative then will that keep happening for the same person?
It's more likely than not that you have got it if you have symptoms and it's been in your house as well.
We've not communicated very well how confirmation of infection with an LFT, days you might be positive, duration of symptoms etc, may have changed from the time pre-vaccine (and even more so pre-booster) to now.
The symptoms most of us have - sneezing, joint aches, fatigue, sore throat, headache - these are caused by our immune system and it's response to the virus, not really by the virus itself. Considering that now we are a population that in the main have our immune systems primed to react quickly to this virus, those symptoms come on earlier than they did pre-booster, for some in the time frame where we would still be negative on an LFT.
Everything has shifted now due to us actually responding quicker to an infection, our symptom window has shifted earlier - Our day 1 on an LFT is generally earlier than pre-booster (because symptoms start earlier, we test earlier). Because our day 1 is identified earlier, it feels like we remain positive for longer (when actually we've just missed the first few days previously pre-booster because symptoms came a few days later than they do now). I think it happens more regularly now that you can feel rough, have symptoms for a few days - but still test negative on a LFT. It takes a few days for the viral load to get to the point where it will give a positive for some.
