I’m down to three covid tests left from my stockpile of last year. One of them had its expiration date extended (magically?) by a year, so it’s still good. And showed positive this morning. I’ve been positive since last Wednesday.
I got used to tests being widely available for free, but now that covid is bouncing back, I was surprised to see them at Walgreen’s for $30 for two of them. A google search shows a wide variety of pricing. Are there any more free/cheap tests available? Where are you getting yours-- or are you still testing at all?
The expiration date didn’t mean that it was known that it would go bad after that time. It meant that it wasn’t known if it would go bad after that time. Which is unsurprising, for a new pharmaceutical: The way to tell how long something will last is to wait and see.
And then, when you wait and see that other tests that use those same chemicals and so on were, in fact, good after that date, then you can extend the expiration date on all such tests.
$4/test is about as cheap as I’ve seen. In the brick-&-mortar world, our local drugstores are currently selling those exact same FlowFlex antigen tests - two to a pack for $24 plus tax.
I asked about free-to-me COVID tests at my pharmacy a few months ago. The technician told me that they would be ready in about 15 minutes, so I walked around the grocery store and purchased a few things. When I returned, she handed me a bag with 8 tests and a receipt from my insurance for $119.
I have a bit of a summer cold and used one a few days ago. It was negative.
Wait — did you have to pay the $119 to the drugstore on the spot? Or was it one of those receipts that said basically “Your insurance paid $119, your share is $0.00” ?
FYI, apparently you can continue to test positive for quite some time after getting COVID (up to 90 days from what I saw somewhere), which is why the CDC rules on isolation and masking are mainly based on the number of days since symptom offset with testing used subsequently only as a means of discontinuing masking early with two negative tests 48 hours apart.
I say all this because I have tested positive myself since last Thursday, having come down with symptoms late Wednesday, and am ending isolation tomorrow. I have been trying to test every couple of days or so, but more out of curiosity than anything else. Symptoms were gone quite quickly (admittedly with the help of Paxlovid).
That’s PCR testing, not antigen testing. If your test positive on an antigen test you are probably still contagious.
When my mom unexpectedly tested positive two weeks after she was diagnosed all the healthcare professionals started wearing full PPE (booties, disposable gowns, etc., Not just masks) when they interacted with her.
The CDC rules are based mainly on days because it’s easier and cheaper, so it’s practical to ask everyone to do it.
Yeah…You may be right. By about 7 days after my first symptoms (and 6 days after my first positive test), I was testing negative again with antigen tests. In fact, even in the previous test that I took two days earlier than that, the antigen test was “barely positive” in the sense that the “test” line was very faint (while the “control” line was not).
Oh yeah…My symptom recovery was very fast, presumably thanks to some combination of Paxlovid and my immune system primed by the 5 doses of vaccine that I’ve gotten. (And, I never had anything beyond standard head-cold symptoms, not even a real fever.) Testing positive held on longer than the symptoms…but not way longer as I had thought might be the case.
I’ve been positive since last Wednesday.