Sellick Weighs in on Effectiveness of At-Home COVID Tests

John A. Sellick Jr., DO, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, was among the experts multiple outlets reached out to for insight into the effectiveness of at-home COVID-19 tests. If you don’t have symptoms of COVID-19 and are just testing to see if you have the virus before doing something like going to a wedding or visiting an elderly relative, there’s a higher chance you’ll get a false reading, says Sellick. “The problem with these tests is that their specificity is not as good as a PCR test,” he says. “You can get false positives, especially in low prevalence settings.”