What You Should Do if Your Covid-19 Test is Delayed

Summary

Despite the frustrating delays in Covid-19 test result turnarounds, testing remains crucial for public health efforts to track and control the virus's spread.

Abstract

The article discusses the current state of Covid-19 testing, acknowledging the good news that testing rates are increasing, providing more complete data on the virus's spread, though still insufficient for full control. However, this rise has led to significant backlogs, causing some individuals to wait up to two weeks for their results, leading to confusion and outrage. The article emphasizes that even with delays, self-quarantine protocols should be followed to prevent potential spread. While the immediate personal benefit of a delayed test result may seem unclear, testing is essential for public health strategies, including understanding community spread, contact tracing, and outbreak investigations.

Opinions

The author expresses that the delay in test results is upsetting and absurd, highlighting the inefficiency in the current testing system.
Dr. Abraar Karan, MD, underscores the importance of adhering to self-quarantine guidelines while awaiting test results to protect others, especially high-risk individuals.
The article conveys that despite the delays, testing remains valuable for public health efforts, as it informs critical decision-making and strategies to mitigate the pandemic's impact.
It is suggested that the immediate personal benefit of testing might be less apparent due to delays, but the collective public health benefit is significant and justifies the continued push for widespread testing.

When test results take up to two weeks to come back, is testing even worth it?

Photo: Bob Riha Jr/Getty Images

Let’s start with the (somewhat) good news: Testing rates are gradually rising all over the country, which means that the data on Covid-19’s spread is more complete than it was at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s nowhere near where it’s supposed to be in order to keep the spread of Covid-19 under control, but it’s slowly getting better.

The bad news is that the increase in testing has created huge backlogs, which means that some people are waiting up to two weeks to get their test results back. Understandably, this has caused a lot of confusion and outrage. “It is so upsetting and absurd in so many ways,” said one law professor on Twitter, referring to the 10-day delay in her area.

Today marks the ninth day I’ve been waiting for my test results from an urgent care clinic in New York City. Like many people, I have questions: What am I supposed to do while I wait for my results? Many people are getting tested because they are worried they were potentially exposed to Covid-19, but symptoms can take two to 14 days to show up, so is it worth it if they won’t know their results for up to two weeks? In short, what is the point of getting tested now?

If quarantining while waiting for your delayed test results seems absurd, that’s because the delay in test results is absurd.

When I asked Abraar Karan, MD, an internal medicine doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, what to do while waiting for test results, he said: “If somebody is waiting for their results and had been tested for possible exposure, they should quarantine accordingly and if they need to go out for some unavoidable reason, to wear a mask and physically distance.”

In other words, the same self-quarantine rules established at the beginning of the pandemic still apply. If you’ve been exposed to someone with Covid-19, stay home for 14 days, watch out for fever, and stay away from people, especially those who are considered high-risk.

If quarantining while waiting for your delayed test results seems absurd, that’s because the delay in test results is absurd. If you do have Covid-19, it very well may be that your symptoms show up before your test results come back positive. Or they might not, if you’re an asymptomatic case. There’s no way of knowing without getting tested, and while you wait, the only way to ensure you don’t inadvertently infect other people is to quarantine.

It may not appear that extremely delayed testing is very useful for your personal health, but it is still very important from a public health perspective. “It is still worth getting tested even with delays in results, as testing has many benefits, including for public health departments to understand the level of spread in the community; for contact tracing and isolation initiatives; as well as for informing outbreak investigations,” Karan says.

Public health departments track the number of positive cases in a region to tell where Covid-19 is spreading, then use that information to stop the spread. Because of testing delays, the data they have doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s happening in real time, and that is almost certainly detrimental to their decision-making. But delayed data is better than no data at all, which is why it’s still important for people to get tested — even though the immediate personal benefits may be frustratingly unclear.