Children who test positive on lateral flow tests will have to self-isolate even if later PCR test is negative
Plans to test schoolchildren in England with controversial lateral flow tests have been thrown into disarray after it emerged it was “very likely” children and their parents would be asked to self-isolate unnecessarily.
Every pupil who received a positive test result after taking a rapid lateral flow device (LFD) test at school should check their result against a so-called gold-standard laboratory test – known as a PCR test – due to the fact that the LFD result was just as likely to be a false positive as a true positive, a leading statistician has said.
