A COVID-19 outbreak in your workplace can be a serious disruption to your business operations. When several employees call out of work because they're ill, you may have trouble meeting project deadlines or serving clients. 

One way that you can minimize the risk of your workplace being disrupted by COVID-19 is to perform periodic testing on your employees. Employees who test positive for COVID-19 should stay home from work to prevent them from spreading the virus around your business. If you're instituting a COVID-19 testing policy at work, there are three main ways that you can implement it. To learn about your options for COVID-19 testing in the workplace along with their advantages and disadvantages, read on.

At-Home Testing Kits

The simplest way to periodically test your employees for COVID-19 is to provide them with at-home test kits. Employees can test themselves if they have COVID-19 symptoms, have been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19, or have recently traveled. At-home test kits provide quick results, and employees should stay home from work if they test positive.

Unfortunately, at-home test kits aren't very sensitive. They detect the presence of COVID-19 antigens in saliva or mucus, and the tests require a large number of antigens in the sample in order to return a positive result. At-home test kits can give employees false negatives if they have a low viral load. Employees also need to perform the test properly in order to obtain an accurate result. If your employees don't collect the test sample correctly, they may receive a false negative on the test due to the sample not having enough antigens in it.

On-Site Test Provider

One way that you can overcome the difficulties in at-home testing is to hire an on-site COVID-19 testing provider. Employees who come to work and are symptomatic can have a test administered in your workplace. A trained COVID-19 testing provider will be able to collect test samples correctly, boosting the accuracy of antigen testing.

One downside of on-site COVID-19 testing is that it requires employees to come to the workplace. If they have COVID-19, they may end up spreading it during the short time they're in the workplace before being sent home. If you use an on-site test provider, it's important to place the testing area in its own dedicated area away from the rest of your employees. This will minimize the risk of employees with COVID-19 spreading the virus while waiting for their test.

Urgent Care Clinics or Primary Care Physicians

If you want the highest accuracy for COVID-19 testing, you can have your employees visit their doctor or an urgent care clinic. Samples taken at these medical facilities will be sent to a laboratory for PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing, which is much more sensitive than antigen testing. PCR testing is not reliant on employees having a large number of antigens in the test sample, which means that it can detect COVID-19 when an employee has a low viral load, such as at the start of an infection.

Having your employees visit an urgent care clinic or their doctor can be inconvenient, however, and it's also more expensive than using antigen test kits. It will also take a few days for the results of the test to come in, and your employees should stay at home while they're waiting for their results. While PCR testing is much more sensitive, it can be a hassle for your employees.

Overall, the best method of testing your employees for COVID-19 depends on the level of risk you're willing to take on and if your employees can work from home. Having your employees visit an urgent care clinic or a doctor for testing is a good solution if they're able to work at home while waiting for the test results since this type of testing is the most accurate.

If you need quicker results, then hiring an on-site test provider is normally the best way to go. It eliminates the need for your employees to perform an at-home test correctly, which boosts accuracy. Regardless of the method, periodic COVID-19 tests will help prevent outbreaks in the workplace by stopping employees with COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.

Contact a local testing service to learn more about COVID-19 tests.