Got a negative COVID test? Knowing what that means for quarantine can be tough

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-02-01 03:00

International

A US study has found people who use at-home COVID-19 self-test kits may fail to self-quarantine or may quarantine unnecessarily because they misinterpret what the test results mean in relation to the need to isolate. The study presented people with a range of scenarios, including high risk ones and they found that many people who got a negative result chose not to quarantine even if COVID-19 symptoms were present or there was a close contact with COVID-19. They found that redesigning the instructions led more people in high risk scenarios to quarantine as recommended.

Media release

From: JAMA

Assessing How Consumers Interpret and Act on Results From At-Home COVID-19 Self-test Kits

JAMA Internal Medicine

What The Study Did: This randomized clinical trial assessed how the instructions and results of at-home COVID-19 self-tests are interpreted and whether users appropriately quarantine per federal recommendations.

Authors: Steven Woloshin, M.D., M.S., of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Lebanon, New Hampshire, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.8075)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Research JAMA, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).

Journal/
conference: JAMA Internal Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, USA

Funder: The research was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Comparative Health System Performance Initiative (grant No. 1U19HS024075) and the S&R Foundation's Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good.

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