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I am assuming they are the lateral flow tests which tend to miss quite a big amount of positive cases?
Lateral Flow Tests missing a large number of positive cases is not necessarily negative.
Lateral flow tests and PCR tests are very different tools for very different scenarios. PCR are good to spot that you have had the virus, but will still return positive long after you are no longer infectious. Lateral Flow Tests are a better indicator of infectiousness.
I've found some of the stuff Tom Chivers, and Tim Harford have written on this subject very informative
https://twitter.com/TomChivers
https://twitter.com/BBCMoreOrLess
https://unherd.com/2021/01/what-covid-tests-can-we-trust/
Sifta
Greenbank
If they're the PCR test it's because they want to sequence them too to check how prevalent the various variants are in the area. You can't do sequencing with the Lateral Flow Tests (unless you take a separate sample).