Rapid home tests may not be as good at detecting Omicron variant as prior COVID strains, FDA says

Rapid COVID-19 home tests are more likely to give a false negative with the heavily-mutated Omicron variant compared to earlier strains, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.

The news comes as the country is facing a massive surge in cases that experts say is being under-captured as a result of a testing crunch, with long wait times for the more accurate PCR tests, and home kits in extremely short supply.

In a statement, the FDA said it was collaborating with the National Institutes of Health to study the performance of home tests, also known as "antigen" tests, against patient samples containing live versions of the Omicron variant.