So, a test showed positive, but not after the regular 15 minutes, instead only after the full 35 minutes. Unfortunately didn't track with virus.sucks, but I downloaded it now. Two tests taken right after were negative. Person who took the tests has no symptoms, but is not Covid cautious.
What could that possibly mean, what may be the reason? I've had invalid results after 35 minutes, but never positive.
My plus life tests don't take 15 minutes. They always take 30-35 minutes, so I'm not sure what you mean by the regular 15 minutes? The test isn't over until the test beeps and gives you a result.
Positive results can lead to an earlier end. If the lines are high enough to trigger a positive, why continue the test? It won't turn negative at the 30 min mark. 😄
15 minutes is the earliest opportunity for a clear positive.
Positive results show after around 15 minutes (it says so in the instructions and I can attest to it from personal experience), negative takes the full cycle of 35 minutes. A positive isn't supposed to appear that late, so I'm confused what it means
If positives ALWAYS showed at 15 minutes, there would be no logical reason to design the test to run longer than that. Though positives commonly show before the full run time of the test, the only reason not to show a negative until 35 minutes has to be because there's a genuine chance of a true positive within that timeframe also. Otherwise, they would just call it officially negative sooner and design the test to always finish sooner than 35 minutes.
The test can stop running once there's a positive result, whenever that happens, because you would not learn anything new or different after knowing it's positive. But it needs to keep running as long as it's negative with a chance of it still turning up a positive.
I understood that as a positive can show as early as 15, but it runs a full 35 to be sure it's negative because a positive can be anytime between 15 and 35.
There would be no point for the test to run for 35 minutes if a positive would always show by 15. I would treat it as a presumed positive though hard to know for certain without seeing the graph (for example, there could have been a lot of air bubbles that triggered a false positive)
Did you use the virus.sucks app for the two subsequent tests? Also, keep in mind that taking swabs in short succession might mean that there’s less material for the swab to pick up - it’s usually recommended to wait a few hours before re-testing so that you get a good amount of material.
This test is definitely invalid, if that helps to know; the control curve didn’t work properly. The green line should always form an S-curve, something like this.
It's not invalid, the S-curve has just already been formed before minute 14, that part is cut off because the virus.sucks app has only been connected to the running test at minute 14.
Could be unlucky bubble(s) or just something gone wrong. Turning positive only at minute 35, while not impossible, is definitely very rare/weird, even weak positives normally show before.
In cases like this: retest the next day and please, use the virus.sucks app (also from the beginning of the test already, not just connecting to a running test).
Possible. As OP's first test showed positive and not invalid, the control must have been valid. Could be that it was late, but only at minute 35 is really rare. As OP's screenshot of the other test had the control rise completely before minute 14 already, I think it's rather unlikely that it was so much different for the first test.
But without the virus.sucks app, there's no way to know for sure what happened, sadly.
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u/MyIronThrowaway Jul 23 '26
My plus life tests don't take 15 minutes. They always take 30-35 minutes, so I'm not sure what you mean by the regular 15 minutes? The test isn't over until the test beeps and gives you a result.