In the age of omicron, where COVID’s attack rate is higher than previous variants, entire households and friend groups are getting sick. If one person gets COVID, there’s a good chance others in their home will also get infected.

What’s odd, though, is occasionally only one or two people in that friend group or family unit will test positive on a rapid test. The rest, though symptomatic, test negative. Are rapid tests missing more infections now than they did with previous variants?

Despite the anecdotal evidence, the latest research suggests the kits work just as well on omicron as they did with delta (meaning they can catch about 80% of cases confirmed by a positive PCR test).

“In general, the rapid tests seem to be performing on par with omicron as well as the other variants,” Wilbur Lam, a professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering at Emory University and a researcher who has been evaluating COVID diagnostic tests for the federal government, told HuffPost.

Rapid antigen tests are designed to detect a specific version of a virus. As variants have emerged, scientists have wondered if the new mutations could impact rapid tests’ ability to detect the changing virus — but this hasn’t been the case.

Most evidence suggests that rapid antigen tests work just as well with omicron as they did with previous variants like delta and alpha. A study from UMass Chan Medical School found that rapid tests caught 92% of omicron infections and 82% of delta infections that had been confirmed on a positive PCR test....