{"id":5459,"date":"2023-12-12T10:47:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T16:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5459"},"modified":"2023-12-12T10:47:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T16:47:05","slug":"what-does-a-faint-line-on-a-covid-19-rapid-test-mean-heres-what-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/12\/12\/what-does-a-faint-line-on-a-covid-19-rapid-test-mean-heres-what-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does A Faint Line On A COVID-19 Rapid Test Mean? Here’s What Experts Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Women’s Health<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing puts a damper on your holiday plans like a positive COVID-19 test<\/a>, am I right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if that line is, like, super <\/em>faint? Do you still have COVID\u2014or can you go ahead and attend your office party like you planned?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, unfortunately, infectious disease experts stress that a faint line is definitely worth paying attention to\u2014although a re-test may be in your future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what you need to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does a faint line on a COVID test mean?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s probably not what you\u2019re hoping to hear, but a faint line on a COVID test means you have COVID-19. \u201cA faint line is a positive test result,\u201d says infectious disease expert Amesh Adalja, MD,<\/a> a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Russo, MD<\/a>,\u00a0a professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo in New York, agrees. \u201cA faint line means you\u2019re almost certainly positive,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the line\u2019s darkness matter?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kind of. If you test positive\u2014faint or not\u2014it means that you have infectious COVID-19 particles in your body, Dr. Russo says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how dark the line is does give you a little insight into what\u2019s going on, Dr. Adalja says. \u201cThe less dark, the line is, the less viral material that is present,\u201d he says. \u201cThis could reflect diminishing contagiousness, or the start of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women’s Health 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\u2014or 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-12-at-11.44.58.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5461,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5459\/revisions\/5461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}