Home Coronavirus Test Results Not Often Reported To Public Health Agencies For Proper Counting

Michael Cantrell   |  

Nov 24, 2021

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While there are now plenty of options for taking at-home COVID tests you can purchase at retailers all across America, the results of these tests are apparently not often being reported to local public health agencies, which means that they are not being factored into the overall case count, according to a new report from the folks at USA Today.

It’s not clear as of this this writing how often results from these home tests are being reported to the proper health agencies for counting. Public health officials spoke with USA Today, telling them that reporting cases is critical for them to be able to predict trends and locate various hotspots for the virus in order to ensure that hospitals are prepared for an influx of patients.

“The whole issue of us tracking every single case is just not going to be possible anymore with these (home) tests,” Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, went on to tell USA Today. “We need to move to a different approach.”

via Newsmax:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to the newspaper that it is currently unable to track the results of at-home tests, but the agency did say that it is coordinating with the companies that manufacture these tests to ensure that customers are able to conveniently report their results via an app or website, though a spokesperson did say that “the amount of data that have flowed as a result of these efforts (is) a tiny fraction of all COVID-19 testing data.”

Analysis from a research team led by Arizona State University professor Mara Aspinall found that the U.S. could make up to 141 million antigen home tests by the end of this month, and that number could reach 424 million by the end of next month. That would be greater than the number of PCR tests that doctors, labs, or other medical settings could perform in that same time frame. However, the results in tests performed in medical settings are regularly reported to public health agencies, while Aspinall estimates that only about 10% of home test results are ever reported.