Only 6% of cases were asymptomatic and only 25% shed culturable virus pre-symptomatically. This is a pre-omicron largely unvaccinated population, but from earlier studies I’d expect ~50%. 2/6

As expected, RAT sensitivity correlated with viral load. However this correlation disappeared in the period after peak viral RNA! 3/6

There were a few more instances of culturable virus with negative RAT than I would have hoped or predicted. The paper calls these “infectious”, but as @profvrr likes to remind us: “culturability doesn’t necessarily imply infectiousness”. 4/6

There were more cases of positive RAT days after virus was no longer culturable than I would have expected. 5/6

We all know RATs are imperfect and it’s informative to see some better details quantifying that imperfection. But this study largely confirms the argument of @michaelmina_lab and others that frequent rapid antigen testing is the best practical way to predict contagiousness. 6/6