As millions of Americans get vaccinated for COVID-19, many of us are starting to hope those painful nose swab tests will soon be a thing of the past.
Alas, the future of COVID-19 testing is more complicated than “less testing,” especially as we head into a potential fourth surge of cases. Testing is still a valuable tool in our COVID-19 prevention toolkit, but the technologies and motivations behind it are shifting. We’ll also have to shift our understanding of test results and metrics. To interpret the test numbers on the news or your local public health department’s website, there are two patterns you should think about: who will be tested