Day 174: Throughout the unpleasant adventures of the past few years, we’ve been very good about ordering our free COVID-19 home tests. We’ve also been good about avoiding risky situations, and so have so rarely felt ill that we’ve not used very many of them. So today, even after double-checking against the FDA’s list of updated expiration dates, I pulled out a pile of test kits that have expired. Glad we had them, glad we didn’t need (many of) them, and glad that we still have some that are good just in case we do need to test.
Not that this is terribly convenient when in a rush, but I’ve read that the control/test stripe is the gold standard of test viability – that even if the test is expired, as long as the test stripe shows up, the real test should still be valid.
I hadn’t heard that. Makes sense, though, and is good to know (or at least theorize about). And we’ve actually kept the “officially expired” tests around as “just in case” measures, so maybe that’ll come in handy at some point down the line.
Though I hope not.