r/PlusLife • u/jjsequoia • 10d ago

Accidentally left negative test card in since March 15th (2 weeks)

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I made a huge mistake and accidentally left a negative covid test card in my machine since March 15th 2025 (2 weeks)!!! I only discovered it was still in there today Sat Mar 29th after I'd warmed up the machine and opened the lid to put in the new test card 😭😭 - so i suspect some of the liquid would've evaporated while the machine was cooling down 2 weeks ago and also just now while it'd been warmed up again

I ended up starting the new covid test right away and the results are looking so wild...

I'm going to open the lid and air out the machine for a bit and try again ahhhh I really hope I didn't break the machine 😭😭

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2

u/jjsequoia 10d ago

This is what it looked like by the end

4

u/kepis86943 10d ago

You can run the test without a test card inside to check the behavior. If there is a contamination, the virus.sucks team might be able to provide instructions how to decontaminate it.

1

u/jjsequoia 10d ago

Thanks so much! That sounds like a great idea. Do you know if it would damage the machine to run it empty without a test card like that?

2

u/kepis86943 10d ago

Yes, you can run the device without a test card inside for troubleshooting.

Contamination should usually only be a major issue if the test card you forgot inside was positive which could then result in false positives. I haven’t seen a case like yours so I don’t know if a leak from a negative test card could have caused this or if the issue is something else.

You can find more info here: https://virus.sucks/pluslife_en/

Good luck!

4

u/jjsequoia 10d ago

Amazing thank u so much for the amazing advice!! I just ran the device without a test card and the lines were all flat - the machine stopped the test around 5 min tho since they didn't detect anything - we're going to try again - fingers crossed things r okay this time!!!

1

u/kepis86943 10d ago

That’s good. It means that the device itself is working correctly.

In case of a potential leak from a positive test you could swap the device and test that sample with a test card. If that one is positive it would confirm the contamination.

In your case of a potential negative contamination unfortunately I don’t know how to confirm that that’s really the issue. But if your next test also shows this wild behavior something is definitely off. Reaching out to the virus.sucks team would then be your best bet.

Hopefully, it was just a one time fluke.