“I could be wrong but from what I understand, the tests still cannot tell the actual difference between true Covid 19 or a normal flu or cold that also happens to be a “covid” strain….”
*************************************************************************
There’s been a lot of confusion on that. As I understand it, the original approved PCR test could only test for COVID-19 and did not detect the flu. They made a requirements change so that the PCR tests (I don’t know about the “instant” antigen tests) had to be able to test for BOTH COVID-19 and for flu and tell if the tested person was positive for flu, positive for COVID-19 or positive for both.
So if somebody is ill, tests for COVID-19 and has the flu but not COVID-19 the test will tell them that.
We can run multiple tests on one sample. We were testing everyone for flu and COVID last winter. After flue season was over we were just testing for COVID but had an outbreak of RSV this summer so started testing for that and as of Nov have been testing for all 3.
Only a couple of flu cases so far. We had decreasing COVID until this week.
It is a bit frustrating that our machines can pick up the s gene dropout but are not programmed to report it. We have 22 doses of the effective monoclonal but no way to know who needs it in time to give it.