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LFD which means infectious
Except when it doesn't...
Three months later I have managed what I'd call a negative LFT but there is still a very very very faint line if you stare at it.
Fox-
Three months later I have managed what I'd call a negative LFT but there is still a very very very faint line if you stare at it.
It's possibly irrelevant in your case but, circling back on our prior discussion on potential LFT 'false positives', I had never really considered the particular manufacturer might be a factor in my own experiences as I'd only used the 'NHS' tests (Innova I think) at that point and was assuming everyone else was using the same.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I got my first box of Flowflex LFTs and tested blatantly positive (as opposed the the faint lines I'd regularly had on the NHS ones) on all of them. I just assumed I'd finally caught it, despite no symptoms, and was surprised when the subsequent PCR came back negative. I tried again over the following days and the same thing happened each time, with another PCR coming back negative again.
At this point I got hold of some 'Orient Gene' LFTs and they have all been negative - yet the Flowflex ones were still showing positive nearly two weeks later. On the other hand, my wife has always tested negative with both types - and I had friends who definitely did have Covid who tested negative on Flowflex throughout. My own experience seems to be consistently repeatable though..
I don't like to disappear down Twitter rabbit holes but there seems to be quite a lot of discussion about this, specifically relating to Flowflex, including amongst healthcare professionals, at the moment.
Thankfully I'm borderline isolating anyway, but this is likely to start getting tricky for me if Flowflex becomes the only available brand..
Rod_Munch
Just remember that the magic graph represents the average kind of case.
There are plenty of people who are positive (both LFD which means infectious, and PCR which means lingering infection) for longer than those example periods.