Can a COVID test show your level of infectiousness?
Can a COVID test show your level of infectiousness?
I've seen many tests (we're talking the average retail 4-drop kits) come up with varying degrees of positivity as a person goes through a bout with COVID.
Once they test positive, it's usually coming up with that T indicator long before the C shows to.
However, I've noticed that even that length of time for the T to show can vary. Sometimes it starts faded and fills in but sometimes the line can go full color as soon as the liquid hits it. Other times it may take a while and come up after the C (once closer to getting over it).
My thought here is the virus particles per million in a person's mucus are fluctuating during the course of their sickness and the more virus particles, the faster that bar is going to pop on the COVID test.
So then, is it stupid to think the faster the T shows up, the more infectious a person is with their coughing/sneezing?
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A home test won't. A PCR gives you some idea if you can get them to tell you the CT (cycle threshold) value of your test. The CT value corresponds to how many times the temperature cycled before the amplification signal of the sample became detectable. Lower CT values correspond to higher viral loads.
Even then, the CT roughly indicates the amount of virus that was in the sample - which correlates with how infectious you are. But it also depends on the quality of the sample and how it was taken. If you're highly infectious but the slab was not correctly inserted, you might have less virus on your sample as one would expect and appear less infectious.
Definitely. Plus, you can absolutely get different CT values from two different testing platforms. Some PCR tests are more hands-on than others and the result can vary based on the quality of processing and on the settings that are used in the analysis software.