My worry was that maybe an antigen throat test would need a different design/reagents/whatever (since there’d be a lot more saliva, etc.) than an antigen nasal test to be sensitive. Apparently the health authorities will not explain any of the “under the hood” issues (just that a throat swab is more difficult, and therefore more dangerous, to do to yourself), and the expert WaPo got is worried not about false negatives but false positives! First, the specificity of the tests are great so it’s hard to fathom what would be introduced to drop that, and second, false positives (as long as they aren’t extremely common) are fine if we’re talking about spread control. Plus, a quick Googling on flu nasal/throat swabs kinda suggests there’s probably not a design issue. Throat swab it is!
My worry was that maybe an antigen throat test would need a different design/reagents/whatever (since there’d be a lot more saliva, etc.) than an antigen nasal test to be sensitive. Apparently the health authorities will not explain any of the “under the hood” issues (just that a throat swab is more difficult, and therefore more dangerous, to do to yourself), and the expert WaPo got is worried not about false negatives but false positives! First, the specificity of the tests are great so it’s hard to fathom what would be introduced to drop that, and second, false positives (as long as they aren’t extremely common) are fine if we’re talking about spread control. Plus, a quick Googling on flu nasal/throat swabs kinda suggests there’s probably not a design issue. Throat swab it is!