A new study from the University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison shows people in nursing homes could benefit from rapid flu testing.
Facilities that did rapid testing saw emergency room visits and hospitalizations decline by over twenty percent. Teaching nurses how to do the rapid tests led to quicker results and looking for simpler warning signs helped identify flu faster in nursing homes.
“A change of state, somebody with a new cold, a respiratory infection should be a trigger for doing more testing.,” said UW School of Medicine and Public Health Professor Dr. Jonathan Temte.
Temte also said that rapid testing for flu was something that was not normally done in nursing homes, but as more professionals in those facilities became accustomed to using them during the pandemic with COVID-19 rapid tests, those lessons may carry over to trying to prevent other viruses.
“Hopefully going forward we can apply the lessons from COVID-19 to things like influenza and other respiratory viruses,” said Temte.
Wisconsin’s oldest residents and those living in long term care facilities are at the highest risk for bad outcomes from flu which makes effective prevention methods all the more critical.
