Are covid-19 tests still working?
Nearly five years after the pandemic started, Marianne Guenot investigates whether current antigenic tests still work against the mutated virus The summer of 2024 has seen a wave of covid-19 infections spreading across the globe, causing a noticeable increase in reported covid-19 cases and, in some places, hospital admissions.1 Wastewater surveillance indicates that the true level of exposure is much higher.2 But social media sites are full of people describing covid-19-like symptoms but getting negative results on their rapid at-home tests. This has prompted many to ask if the tests we have are still fit for purpose. “Most existing tests used to detect covid-19 [virus] appear to be effective with currently circulating variants,” the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told The BMJ in a statement. Maria Sundaram, an associate research scientist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute and editor of the Infectious Disease Society of America’s Real Time Covid-19 Learning Network web