COVID-19 tests were in such short supply during the winter’s Omicron surge that most infections—affecting up to three out of four Americans by some estimates—went entirely undiagnosed. Now, with abundant rapid tests and another looming wave of cases, we may soon confront a different problem: Large numbers of infections will be missed in the coming months because these tests are so widespread.
America’s COVID-detection program has entered a novel phase. Thanks to the entrance of new over-the-counter diagnostic manufacturers and the federal government’s promise to send up to eight tests to every home, a COVID diagnosis is, at this point, far more likely to be obtained through self-swabbing than through lab-based PCR techniques. One of more than a dozen companies, iHealth, is producing 300 million rapid antigen devices per month, while all the country’s labs put together have maxed out at conducting just 2.5 million tests a day. Because rapid results are rarely reported to public-health agencies, that means our early-warning system may now be somewhat less sensitive than it was before. More important, these tests’ ubiquity could bring a wave of false-negative results in tandem with the next wave of illness—and thus a wave of missed opportunities for treatment.
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