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From there, you should know what your results actually mean, including a faint positive line, and when to take another test or get a more sensitive COVID-19 test from your doctor to clear things up.
“A faint line on a COVID test means the test is positive,” says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
It will generally not be positive during the 4–6 week incubation period before the onset of symptoms. The highest amount of heterophile antibodies occurs 2 to 5 weeks after the onset of symptoms. [9] If positive, it will remain so for at least six weeks. [10] An elevated heterophile antibody level may persist up to 1 year. [9]
As rapid antigen COVID-19 tests measure the presence of viral proteins, even a faint line positive result indicates that SARS-CoV-2 has had an impact on your immune system.
Reference ranges (reference intervals) for blood tests are sets of values used by a health professional to interpret a set of medical test results from blood samples. Reference ranges for blood tests are studied within the field of clinical chemistry (also known as "clinical biochemistry", "chemical pathology" or "pure blood chemistry"), the ...
Here "T+" or "T−" denote that the result of the test is positive or negative, respectively. Likewise, "D+" or "D−" denote that the disease is present or absent, respectively. So "true positives" are those that test positive (T+) and have the disease (D+), and "false positives" are those that test positive (T+) but do not have the disease (D ...
If your COVID-19 rapid test turns positive, but the line is faint, unfortunately it still means you have COVID. However, a re-test might be in your future.
For the figure that shows high sensitivity and low specificity, there are 3 FN and 8 FP. Using the fact that positive results = true positives (TP) + FP, we get TP = positive results - FP, or TP = 40 - 8 = 32. The number of sick people in the data set is equal to TP + FN, or 32 + 3 = 35. The sensitivity is therefore 32 / 35 = 91.4%.