This is really really good news! I don’t know if these kits are available in Michigan, but I’m going to check soon and find out.

Just a small word of caution, and I almost hesitate to mention it for fear of dissuading people from using valuable tools, but when HIV AB/AG rapid kits that had proven remarkably sensitive and specific in clinical settings were first released for home use, false negative started popping up at much higher rates than expected.

It turned out to be sample collection error, and some tweaking had to be done on packaging and instructions to make sure people understood exactly what they needed to do to get accurate results.

And that was with auto lancet thumb pricking, which is kind of hard to mess up. Today, there is still a small but non-negligible disparity between rapid test results in clinical settings and home settings when comparing identical test kits.

Just something for people to be cautious about and take seriously.