Students should not rely on lateral flow test results, GP says
A doctor has warned that the Covid-19 mass testing programme for students before they travel home for Christmas needs “independent oversight”, given the risk of students receiving a false negative result.
In a blogpost for the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published on 1 December, GP Margaret McCartney argued that Covid-19 lateral flow tests—which do not require laboratories and give results within half an hour—carried a risk of returning a false negative result and leading students to conduct “more risky behaviour”.