With the omicron variant of the coronavirus running rampant across the United States, many areas of the country are experiencing a severe shortage of at-home COVID tests. And one social media trend is helping to exacerbate the problem even further.
In search of clicks, some social media users are intentionally destroying the same unused COVID tests that many are clamoring for.
The trend features users on video platforms using the tests in incorrect ways like running them under tap water in an effort to induce a false positive result.
One now-unavailable TikTok video, posted by app user @hippee0, had been viewed over 14 million times and features a person doing just that. The video, which has been “liked” almost 250,000 times and garnered over 17,000 comments, includes text that reads, “Tap water tests positive for covid.”
Not all the comments are supportive, with one user grousing, “And that’s why there’s a shortage of these tests.”
TikTok and Instagram are populated with dozens of videos just like this one, but experts caution that these “false positive” results are not signs of faulty tests but rather operator misuse. In fact, the FDA says positive results from antigen tests are “highly accurate” when the proper instructions are followed.
“Most importantly, these tests were designed to be used according to the directions, period,” Mara Aspinall, a professor of biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University, told CBS MoneyWatch.
“You will get inaccurate results when the tests are not used how they are designed,” she continued. “Medical testing is a very sophisticated science, and we are only just moving into these home tests. There is a lot of sophistication and process that goes into doing them at the lab, and you have to respect that when you're doing them at home.”
Currently, positive diagnoses for COVID are reaching new daily peaks, topping 1 million per day for the first time since the pandemic started.
The outbreak is fueled by the highly-contagious Omicron variant, which currently accounts for 95% of all COVID cases in the country.
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