Growing use of at-home tests could lead to an undercount of omicron cases

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The omicron surge has triggered a rapid increase in the use of at-home coronavirus tests. Supplies of those tests are now running low, even as access to PCR tests (which are sent to a lab for results) is strained amid rising demand.

The Biden administration pledges to resolve this serious problem through a program to increase the number of testing sites and the production of at-home tests. Further, the administration plans to provide at least 500 million at-home tests free starting in January.

This plan is welcome, although it's unclear whether the ramp-up can meet the demand in time. That depends on the trajectory of the omicron outbreak. If the outbreak extends well into February or March even a billion free tests will not be enough in a nation of 334 million people.

But there's another challenge associated with the at-home tests: The results they yield are not widely reported to health authorities. I asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about this and got an honest but incomplete answer.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/growing-use-of-at-home-tests-could-lead-to-an-undercount-of-omicron-cases/ar-AASfn34

[EarlG]

1. It seems likely that we'll moving beyond counting infections as Covid becomes endemic

Covid is here to stay, it will not be eliminated. And given how infectious Omicron is, we're a long way away from the early pandemic days of contact tracing to prevent outbreaks.

In the last few days I heard at least one medical professional (forgive me, I forget who it was and I don't have a source) suggest that a more useful metric going forward will be to count hospitalizations and deaths.