How Accurate are Flu Tests?

In primary care offices, we do many types of rapid testing to help us diagnose and treat patients– pregnancy tests, urine tests for infection, rapid strep tests, and of course, rapid flu tests. How accurate are these tests? If a rapid flu test is POSITIVE, it is extremely accurate- 98%. This means they are very SPECIFIC tests- if it says you have it, you have a 98% chance that you really do have the flu, so the likelihood of a false positive is very low. If your rapid flu test result is NEGATIVE, however, you might still have … Read more