Nothing puts a damper on your holiday plans like a positive COVID-19 test, am I right?
But what if that line is, like, super faint? Do you still have COVID—or can you go ahead and attend your office party like you planned?
Well, unfortunately, infectious disease experts stress that a faint line is definitely worth paying attention to—although a re-test may be in your future.
Here’s what you need to know.
What does a faint line on a COVID test mean?
It’s probably not what you’re hoping to hear, but a faint line on a COVID test means you have COVID-19. “A faint line is a positive test result,” says infectious disease expert Amesh Adalja, MD, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Thomas Russo, MD, a professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo in New York, agrees. “A faint line means you’re almost certainly positive,” he says.
Does the line’s darkness matter?
Kind of. If you test positive—faint or not—it means that you have infectious COVID-19 particles in your body, Dr. Russo says.
But how dark the line is does give you a little insight into what’s going on, Dr. Adalja says. “The less dark, the line is, the less viral material that is present,” he says. “This could reflect diminishing contagiousness, or the start of it.”