Researchers launched their study at a walk-up testing site in Los Angeles County during the winter surge in coronavirus cases, with 774 children between the ages of 5 and 17 being tested once with a rapid antigen test and once with a PCR test to confirm the results of the rapid test.
The study showed that the rapid, inexpensive and easy-to-use antigen tests have very low false positive rates but a moderately high false negative rate that did occasionally identify someone as negative who in fact had COVID-19, researchers said.
"The good news is that the false negative rate is low in kids likely to be infectious, as measured by viral load,'' said Sood, who is also a professor of health policy, preventive medicine and business and the vice dean of research at the USC Price School of Public Policy. "Serial rapid testing may help compensate for missing the virus in the earliest stage of infection."