SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WXYZ) — If you’re like many Americans, you may have unused COVID tests sitting in your medicine cabinet.
Royal Oak resident Nichole Steinman admits she’s like so many others.
“I believe I have five or six,” Steinman said.
Some of us have tests from the last cold, flu and COVID season. Others have tests from early in the pandemic. But, in this new cold and flu season, can you simply grab one of those older tests to find out if your cough runny nose and fever is COVID?
The answer is yes and no.
Dr. Lea Monday is an infectious disease doctor at the Detroit Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Wayne State University. She says when the at-home COVID test came out under emergency use authorization, there wasn't time to study how long the tests would provide accurate results.
“So the original expiration dates were sort of arbitrarily selected at one year or a year and a half after manufactured,” said Dr. Monday.
She says scientific evidence now shows many at-home COVID tests are valid for a much longer period of time. But not every test. 3EO Health's COVID test is good for just four months with no extension. Others like Abbott's Binax Now are good for almost two years. And has an extended expiration date.
“This is one of the tests that I had at my house. And when I went on to the expiration date in the back, it said it expired in August. But when I checked the FDA website, actually, I can use it until December,” Dr. Monday revealed.
Using an expired test that has not been extended can give you inaccurate results. There are two new COVID strains in circulation, EG-5 or Eris and HV-1. Together, they make up about half of all COVID infections.
“The symptoms of these variants are the same as the previous ones where anybody with a sore throat, runny nose, fever, cough could have COVID,” Dr. Monday said.
And there doesn't appear to be any difference in severity or infectiousness. Your current at-home COVID test should detect the end protein unique to COVID.
“That has been relatively the same across all of areas. So, there's no reason to think that our home test won't work for these new variants,” Dr. Monday said.
Still, Dr. Monday urges the public to test and get boosted.
Scott Palazzolo says his COVID tests are just a couple of weeks old.
When asked what prompted him to get the new round of COVID tests, Palazzolo said “They were available. They said they deliver them for free, so I just did it.”
And if you do get the latest COVID booster, you won’t have to worry about the COVID vaccination card. The government stopped printing them and you won’t be asked to show your card.
Pharmacists will fill them out if you want. Many pharmacies are keeping their own records and reporting vaccinations to the state health department.
So, if you ever need your COVID vaccination record you can get it from them.
