Your daughter wakes up with a scratchy throat, and you can’t decide whether she should go to school.

You can’t shake a runny nose and start wondering whether it’s really because of allergies.

You’re planning a family gathering, but you are nervous about your aging parents being there.

Millions of Americans are grappling with situations like these, and there is a straightforward solution to all of them. But that solution is not widely available in the United States, even though the technology exists and is being used in much of Western Europe.

The solution is rapid testing.

Rapid testing — more formally known as antigen testing — allows people to learn within minutes whether they are carrying enough of the Covid-19 virus to be contagious. With this knowledge, infectious people can stay home and quarantine before they infect others. Everybody else can carry on with life.

Read the full article at nytimes.com.