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If you re looking to get tested for COVID-19, the draw of taking an at-home test is obvious. You can save time and avoid coming into contact with someone who might be infected. Pretty ideal.
Even better, at-home COVID-19 tests are likely to be highly accurate, says Alexander J. McAdam, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Division at Boston Children s Hospital and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.
Most at-home tests that people have been talking about are RT-PCR or molecular tests, which work by using chemical reactions that make many, many copies of the viral genome, and detecting those copies, explains Dr. McAdam. Once a lab technician receives a specimen (usually, mucus from the throat or nose), they use a chemical to extract genetic material from any virus on the swab, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They then use a machine to detect whether COVID-19 is present; the machine indicates a positive o