Coronavirus is a serious illness and an infection that spreads rapidly. Therefore as soon as person finds symptoms like dry cough, fever, headache, loss of smell and taste person should get tested. It is very important to get tested on time to get proper medication and treatment and can get self isolated to stop the spreading of disease.
Different types of COVID tests are –
This is also known as RT-PCR test. A nasal or throat swab sample is taken to detect the presence of virus. This test fails to show if you were infected with COVID in past as it diagnoses the active virus present.
Nowadays, home test kits have become available which allows testing at home. People can collect their own samples and send that in lab for analysis. So in this test testing can be done on own as well as through health care workers. But it is recommended to get tested in lab to ensure that testing is done through proper method.
This is a highly sensitive method of testing and is mostly accurate. Also if the person tests positive so he should immediately get isolated and take a proper medication from doctor.
Antigen test
This is also known as rapid test as the test results can be derived in an hour or less. This test helps in identifying the antigens related to virus. In this test also throat or nasal swab sample is taken.
But this test is not that much effective as there might be a case where the test reports may not be accurate. This test is highly accurate if the result comes positive but in a case where the result is negative and person feels the symptoms he should go for molecular test.
Antibody test
This is also known as serology blood test. This test does not look for active virus but checks whether the immune system has responded to the infection. Therefore this test tells whether you were previously infected with virus.
It is tested by drawing blood sample and the test reports may come in 1-2 day.
Moreover, in case you have minor symptoms you should immediately contact your healthcare centre and get yourself tested to stop the spread. Do not ignore the signs and take a proper care.
