Outfox the fever
Up until recently, the only way to diagnose someone with COVID was to do a PCR swab, where a swab of the nose and/or throat is used to pick up traces of coronavirus DNA. It is a highly sensitive test, but it can take several days to get a result.
Lateral flow tests (LFTs) are on-the-spot COVID tests, which can give you an answer within 30 minutes – and that means they are really useful from a practical point of view. However, the downside is that they are not as accurate as PCR tests. What they are very good at, though, is picking up people who are likely to be highly infectious, even if they don’t have symptoms, and this is precisely what we need to know if we want to limit transmission.
Much like anything to do with COVID, there have been some conspiracy theories coming out of the woodwork and circulating about LFTs, too.