'It's A Big Waste': Medical Professionals Call Out Social Media Trend Of People Manipulating At-Home COVID Tests
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A social media trend is raising alarms during the fight against COVID.
People are posting videos that show them purposefully using COVID-19 rapid tests incorrectly to elicit a false positive.
"It's simply just someone misusing a piece of technology," said Dr. Geoffrey Baird, who is with the University of Washington.
He says despite these video spreading misinformation what's most troublesome is that people are wasting rapid tests while there's currently a national shortage due to the omicron Surge.
"When you just use it for something else to get views on social media, that really is not at all what these things are for and it's a big waste," he said. "There are people who would wait in line and would pay their hard earned money to have those tests to use them rather than to just film a joke and throw them in the garbage."
Despite what you may see online, Dr. Baird says these tests are not detecting COVID in the water or malfunctioning.
"Putting tap water on something that is not intended to receive tap water as a sample, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. That just means you didn't follow the instructions," he said.