Have a COVID test at home? Here’s when Conn. doctors say to use it
COVID tests are in short supply nationwide. Order one online and it won’t arrive for weeks.
Retail pharmacies are out of rapid tests, and there are long lines whenever a shipment comes in. PCRs are sometimes scheduled days in advance, and it might take five days to get a result.
With these resources so thin on the ground, when should you actually get tested? When Connecticut distributed millions of free rapid tests, many municipalities told residents not to take them unless they were symptomatic.
“The best use of test kits is if you have symptoms or if you know you have been exposed to someone with COVID,” said Dr. Henry Yoon, medical advisor for the city of Stamford.
Testing is often used as a public health measure, according to Dr. Scott Roberts, associate director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital. He said the protocol of test, trace and isolate is “our bread-andbutter tools to prevent spread of a contagious disease.
“In an ideal world, we have ample testing supply, and anybody who wants or needs a test has access to one,” he said. “We test those who are symptomatic. We trace those contacts who they've been exposed to, and then we isolate them.”
But this, Roberts said, is not an ideal situation. Hospitals are even rationing testing resources.
“It's more the staffing to do the tests,” he said. “We just had so many people, so many health care workers who are getting infected and having to stay home, and so we're prioritizing for the highest-risk individuals such as symptomatic people, people who are exposed who we need to know if they're positive several days after the exposure, and not prioritizing as much for situations where we really should be testing, but we simply don't have the capacity.”
Roberts said if you’re not symptomatic, have had no known exposure to COVID, but are heading into a necessary social situation, take a rapid test if you can get one.
If you’re symptomatic and don’t need a hospital, assume you have COVID and isolate, he said.
“Right now, when we're setting records by the day, we have to assume anybody with symptoms and a clear exposure certainly is COVID,” he said.
Hartford HealthCare’s chief epidemiologist, Dr. Ulysses Wu, said it does not make sense to test at home, with no reason.
“I wouldn't recommend at-home testing just for the sake of testing. Because we do know that there's a lot of people out there that are continually testing just to see,” he said. "But I would certainly recommend it if you are having symptoms, I think that would be the most important thing. And No. 2, if you're planning on going somewhere where you could potentially expose other people, whether you're symptomatic or asymptomatic.”
“You don’t need to use the kit now if you’re feeling well and have not been exposed to anyone with COVID-19,” Yoon said.
The at-home tests are resulting in a lot of false negatives, Wu said, so while a positive result is probably accurate, a negative result should be confirmed, either by a second rapid test or a PCR.
“When should you follow it up with a PCR test? Well, it depends on the expectation that you may or may not have COVID,” Wu said. “If you really think you have COVID and your test is negative, I would certainly recommend getting a PCR test.”
Yoon agreed. “If you are exposed and have no symptoms, test on day five after the exposure,” he said. “If you have symptoms of COVID-19 and test positive on the home kit, there is typically no need to verify the results with a PCR test.”
Testing for work
Carol Boedicker is vice president of human resources at Habco, an aerospace manufacturer in Glastonbury. They’ve been ahead of the game on COVID testing from the beginning.
“We've actually been conducting COVID testing with our employees since April of 2020,” Boedicker said.
In March 2020, Habco partnered with Microgen DX, which had developed a saliva-based test for the coronavirus. Habco’s production staff never went remote and, by July 2020, when those employees who could work from home returned to the office, Habco instituted a test-negative policy, and random pool testing.
Employees and visitors who wanted or needed to be in the office could take a company-provided rapid test in the parking lot. Since vaccines became available, Habco has been offering any employee — and their families — the opportunity to test for the virus, for free and at will.
The company’s testing requirements for employees have changed over the course of the pandemic. Until recently, only unvaccinated employees have been required to test negative, but there were times when the protocols changed.
“Coming back from a major holiday, we did this last year, we were testing the entire company, all employees, so there are certain times where we're testing everyone,” Boedicker said. “But right now, prior to this recent omicron surge, we were only requiring that employees who had not confirmed vaccination status needed to get tested on a bi-weekly basis.”