What to do if you're still waiting on your coronavirus test results

Coronavirus drive-thru testing at Penn State Health Saint Joseph

As coronavirus cases surge across the South and West, so does the demand for testing with hundreds of people lining up, sometimes waiting for hours to get screened for the virus.

It typically takes three to four days to get back your test results, but some Georgians report waiting for twice that or longer.

So, what do you do until you know if you're positive or negative?

If you're getting tested because you think you've been exposed to the virus, you need to self-quarantine.

That means:

  • stay home, except for getting medical care,
  • monitor yourself for symptoms,
  • stay away from other people and pets in your home.

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If you think you might have been infected, your instinct may be to get tested as soon as possible.

But experts say you should take your time.

Wait for three to four days after your potential exposure before getting tested for the virus. If you are tested too early on in the infection, when you are still in the presymptomatic stage of the virus, there may not be enough virus in your body to detect an infection.

So, test too soon and you could get a false negative result, indicating you don't have the virus when you do.

Still, remember we are likely most contagious early on, in that presymptomatic phase and up to 48 hours before we develop our first symptoms.

Know how the COVID-19 outbreak is impacting Georgia

So stay in isolation until you get your test results.

If you test negative, you were probably not infected when your sample was collected.

If you test positive and have symptoms, you will need to isolate for 10 days from the day your first symptoms appeared.

You will also need to be fever-free without medication and have improving symptoms for three days before you can consider going back out into the world.

If you test positive but have no symptoms, you will still need to isolate for 10 days from the day you took your test.

Experts believe it is still possible to infect others even if you do not feel sick.

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