The agency says early data suggests the home tests, known as 'antigen' tests, may produce more false negatives than they do with earlier forms of COVID-19.
home tests are more likely to give a false negative with the heavily-mutated Omicron variant compared to earlier strains, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.that experts say is being under-captured as a result of a testing crunch, with long wait times for the more accurate PCR tests, and home kits in extremely short supply.
"Early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the Omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity," the agency said.Previous testing had focused on heat-inactivated virus samples, rather than live virus, which is better, and a drop-off in performance hadn't been spotted until now, the statement added.
For instance, some rapid tests instruct users to take two tests, a certain amount of time apart, in order to confirm a negative.
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