Health Matters

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What's the point of PCR tests anymore?

By Jamie Ducharme

Health Correspondent

As a slightly neurotic person who writes about health for a living, I used to get a lot of COVID-19 PCR tests. But I haven’t had one in recent memory—not because I’ve stopped screening myself for COVID-19, but because I’ve switched to testing at home.

That’s the case for lots of people. And it made me wonder what role PCR tests should play in the ongoing pandemic.

The experts I interviewed said at-home tests work well for most of the average person’s testing needs, but there are still some situations when it makes sense to get a PCR test, the gold standard for diagnostic accuracy. To sum it up, in the words of laboratory medicine physician Dr. Charles Chiu, “If you want to be absolutely sure that you are not infected, you should still get a PCR test.”

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AN EXPERT VOICE

"Getting Americans used to a time when we can have some diagnostic certainty is not a bad thing. We shouldn't just accept pure treatment [without tests to confirm a diagnosis]."

—Dr. Yuka Manabe, infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, on how the pandemic proved the value of testing

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Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and edited by Mandy Oaklander.

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"Getting Americans used to a time when we can have some diagnostic certainty is not a bad thing. We shouldn't just accept pure treatment [without tests to confirm a diagnosis]."

—Dr. Yuka Manabe, infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, on how the pandemic proved the value of testing