Let’s say you contract the coronavirus on a Friday. If you had a test the next day, could you identify an active infection?
This is just one of countless logistical problems that come up when it comes to COVID-19. The incubation period for this virus is still variable, depending on your individual biology, according to a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
You see, how a virus affects you depends on an “incubation period,” the number of days between when you contract a pathogen and actually show symptoms. With COVID, things get even more complicated because you may not show any symptoms.
But being asymptomatic does not mean that you cannot pass the pathogen to many other people. The mathematics of virology resides on a logarithmic scale. (If you can potentially infect two people, then those two people can infect two other people – you get a lot of infections pretty quickly.)
And that is precisely the reason why it is so important to know if you can be an active carrier of the coronavirus, information that can very well be dictated by exactly what type of test you are taking.
For example, a rapid response “antigen test”, which can return results on site in half an hour, will be a more useful piece of information than a test that takes three days to return.
There’s another complication: An active coronavirus infection done through a rapid antigen test, such as a 15-minute one like Abbott’s, has a better chance of giving a false negative result than one that may rely on chain reaction technology. polymerase (PCR). according to Harvard Medical School. Therefore, you may need to perform a rapid response test and a follow-up PCR test to confirm an active infection.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) states, “If the COVID-19 test is negative, you probably were not infected at the time the sample was taken.” This does not mean that you will not fall ill; A negative test result means that you did not have COVID-19 at the time of testing or that your sample was taken long before infection. “
The Annals of Internal Medicine study states that the average incubation period for coronavirus is approximately five days. But it can span a range of two days to two weeks, further complicating the intricate web of coronavirus diagnoses.
