At-home covid tests: what’s fact vs. fiction?

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – With at-home covid tests more readily available now than ever, many are concerned that positive cases aren’t being reported – skewing health data.

The CDC says if you test positive to immediately inform your healthcare provider. 

We spoke with a local epidemiologist who tells us there are other ways for health departments to determine the number of positive cases in a community.

Barren River Health Department epidemiologist India Martinez said despite the label that comes on some testing kits, you are not obligated to report your at home covid test results to the health department. Surprisingly, she said this won’t skew our nation’s covid data.

“We have other ways of estimating disease burden, so we can look at hospitalization data, death records, missing attendance records from schools and employers to estimate the burden of disease,” said Martinez.

However, Martinez said people who test positive at home should notify places like their schools, work, daycare centers, and other large gatherings or high risk places. 

Martinez recommends in most cases, you don’t need to go to an urgent care to confirm your positive at home result. She says in most cases, this unnecessarily puts healthcare worker at risk, and they need all the extra covid tests they have. 

“If you have that positive test, we’re going to count that as a positive,” Martinez said. “So, going to urgent care just to get a positive test to confirm isn’t going to change much.”

She says  at the end of the day, “The benefits of having at home tests outweigh the inconvenience of not having that data. So, people being able to take their own health in their hands and make those decisions, that’s very important.”

Visit the CDC website and the Barren River Health Department’s website for more info.