Desperate to preserve at-home COVID-19 testing kits, some families are sharing a single test. Health experts say this 'intranasal promiscuity' is gross and yields inaccurate results.

As the Omicron variant swept through the country, many desperate families decided to test multiple people with one sample, because it was hard to get the rapid tests.
Public health experts warn that the method may not yield accurate results and that sharing mucus with others is unsafe.

"From a public-health perspective, it doesn't sound like a good idea to put a sample in each other's noses," said Nuzzo.

Elena told the publication that she used a sample from a test in her nose to give her husband a sample of his own. Two of the couple's kids had their noses cleaned.
The sample came back negative after being tested.
The method draws inspiration from pool testing, which is done at schools like Northeastern University. The method takes samples from people who are not sick and combines them to run a test. Each individual sample would be tested if the test came back positive.
Experts told the Atlantic that pool testing was designed to accommodate multiple samples, whereas at- home tests are meant for one sample.
A clinical microbiologist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine told the Atlantic that combining samples from multiple people in an at- home test could make the test less effective.
Health experts said that it's not just whether or not this testing method would work to pick up a COVID-19 case. According to Nuzzo, the chance of someone spreading COVID-19 to a house member is between 15% and 35%.