Most become positive 5-7 days following exposure
How helpful is a COVID-19 test?
It depends.
“A lot of people have far more faith in a test than what it really represents,” County Health Officer Lee Smith recently told a group of entrepreneurs in response to questions about when employees should be tested and the circumstances under which an employee who tests positive can return to work.
Turns out timing is everything.
First, simply being in a room or building with someone who later tests positive doesn’t make you a contact. A contact is defined as someone who is closer than six feet for more than 15 minutes, without protection.
Second, it takes the average person five to seven days from date of contact to test positive — some as long as 14 days.
“So even if you’re considered a contact, it would still be five to seven days before you would turn positive, so going to get tested that day doesn’t offer you any information other than a test you can’t rely on,” Smith said.
Third, once you do test positive, the expectation is that you’ll isolate for 10 days. If you have no symptoms at the end of that 10-day period, you’re free to return to work or go about your business per CDC guidelines.
Smith explained that there were people exposed in Monongalia County’s initial outbreak in Sundale Rehabilitation and Long-Term Care who tested positive for 70 days.
Cases like that prompted the CDC to begin recommending people isolate for 10 days and, if symptom-free, return to life as normal. Despite this, Smith said, some employers require a negative test before an employee can return to work.
If a contact is symptom-free after 14 days, the recommendation is the same.
“So why would you want to get a test following your 14 days or your 10 days? Just to keep getting tested? It doesn’t tell you anything,” Smith said. “Yes, you may still have that virus in your nose, but is it infectious? The CDC says you’re free to move about the country.”
He later added, “Don’t confuse the matter by getting additional testing is the take-home message.”
Lastly, Smith said that of the 13 million or so cases worldwide, he’s aware of cases numbering in the single digits in which a person contracts COVID-19 a second time.
“Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it likely? Probably not — especially in somebody young and healthy,” he said, explaining that much of the confusion regarding the virus comes down to information overload.
“Having various 24-hour news stations and people on TV and the government involved — 50-some executive orders and hundreds of CDC briefings — it can be confusing,” he said.
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