| In this week's edition of the Covid Q&A, we look at home tests for Covid-19. In hopes of helping to make this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosis is picking one question sent in by readers and putting it to an expert in the field. This week's question comes to us from Bill. He wondered how whether the new at-home Covid-19 tests might be used to make visits with friends and family at home safer. Bill asks:
May we purchase a Covid test to administer to people before they enter our home? A number of companies have been authorized by the FDA to sell tests that can be administered at home in recent months, but most require sending a sample to a lab for processing. That means even if your guest was to take one, you'd need to wait a while for the results. The first fully at-home, over-the-counter test, made by a company called Ellume, was authorized by the FDA on Dec. 15, but it isn't expected to be available for you to purchase until sometime in early 2021. Once you can walk into a drugstore and buy it or a test like it, said Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, it's important to keep a few things in mind.  "Unfortunately, a single negative rapid test doesn't guarantee that the person is not infected," said Jha. "This was the strategy used at the White House and it led to several large outbreaks including the President getting infected."
Rapid tests are, generally speaking, not as accurate as the lab-processed PCR tests that are the gold-standard for Covid-19 testing. Additionally, there is a chance that even those tests might not pick up someone who has become infected with the virus more recently. That's why public-health experts stress the importance of quarantining in addition to testing before visiting family or friends. No test is accurate 100% of the time.
Still, at-home tests will be an important part of increasing testing capacity to help decrease the virus's spread. And if you must have someone over, said Jha, a rapid at-home test is a vast improvement over no test at all. "If you need to have this person in the home, you can do it," he said. "But understand that the risk of someone who tests negative entering your home is not anywhere near zero."
Thanks to all of you for writing in this week! Next Sunday, we'll be answering the best question we receive again. So if you have any, we want to hear from you. Submit your question via CovidQs@bloomberg.net--Kristen V. Brown
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