Are Cue Health COVID tests worth it?

May 8, 2022 12:23 PM

The Cue Health COVID tests claim to detect the presence of COVID-19 RNA and be "PCR quality." They are also sort of ridiculously expensive. I'm fortunate enough to be able to cover the expense and am seriously wondering if the extra peace of mind when there's a real exposure risk might be worth it--especially after having my 3rd BinaxNow test card fall apart on me, and considering what a pain it can be to get a PCR test appointment. Are they actually worth it? What am I not considering?

They're FDA approved, and the Mayo Clinic study on their site is compelling, and they seem to be used by some pretty big organizations--but all that information is from their own website.

I have to do a home test weekly right now no matter what, and I'd keep doing home antigen tests most of the time and supplement them with the Cue when I suspected symptoms or a real risk of exposure.

posted by rhiannonstone to Health & Fitness (14 answers total)

Best answer: I have used them extensively. They're fine? I find them annoying in two ways: one, they are slower than rapid tests and unlike rapid tests give you no visual indicator except a progress box, so you're left just waiting for 20-30 minutes for it to finish, whereas the test line on a rapid test will (usually) show positive pretty quickly if you're sick. The other problem is that sometimes the tests fail, but they don't tell you that they are failed until the very end of the test, so you've been waiting for that time and then it tells you invalid result. I've never had a rapid test fail to show a control line, and I've had about 10% of the cue tests I've taken fail, so they are more likely in my experience to simply fail to give a result either way.

I like them for testing when it matters, such as when a member of my family was positive and I needed to do in-person events, I felt more confident with negative cue results than I might've with just rapid test results. But I get them for free via a work connection and I'm not sure I would actually pay out of pocket for them. I prefer to use rapid tests for all the reasons listed above except in the case where I think there's a legit exposure risk to others from me, and I have to pay for rapids out of my own pocket, that's how much more I prefer the experience of rapid tests.
posted by ch1x0r at 12:34 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I basically agree with ch1x0r. I get them for free from work, and in that sense they're great. But you can't take multiple tests in parallel without multiple readers (important if you have many people in your household - a 4 person household will take well over an hour to test). And they're extremely expensive. I don't think I'd buy one with my own money. If it's my employer, great! But otherwise I don't think they're worth the cost premium over the normal tests.
posted by kdar at 12:55 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Hehe anyone posting on this thread has a high probability of working at one of a handful of employers. Like others, I'm happy to have and use Cue tests but I don't think I'd pay for them out of pocket. Yes it's nice to have a PCR quality test at home, and it would be really convenient if I were doing a lot of international travel to be able to do the proctored test at home. But antigen tests also have many nice features: you can get a positive result very quickly, you can run a bunch of them in parallel, and you can go pick them up at the store when you need them.

I'd also add that Cue tests are much more sensitive than antigen tests so if you have someone asymptomatic with a very slight infection you may find yourself with a positive test on your hands that seems really dubious but feel obligated to quarantine anyway. My kid just missed three days of school because of this and I have no idea if she actually had covid.

And ALSO they are very sensitive to temperature so if you get them delivered in the summer and they sit out on a hot porch they are all toast. I lost a whole box to this last summer. Cue should send replacements but it's pretty inconvenient and I imagine if it kept happening they might get less generous about replacing them. I've also heard people whose cartridges were ruined after traveling in checked baggage because they got too cold. You've got to keep them in the temperature window.

One cool new thing Cue just started doing is that if you get a positive test you can opt to have a sequencing kit mailed to you so they can tell you which variant you had. That's neat! But not something I'd likely pay for if it were offered to me, I just did it because it came with the service.

I guess the other nice thing is that because there are so few people with a Cue reader, the cartridges are less impacted by supply chain issues. When it was impossible to get an antigen test over the winter, my cartridge order was a bit delayed but definitely I still got some.

So, IDK, in my opinion they aren't worth it for most people as an out-of-pocket thing. If you need to travel internationally a lot, I would consider a Cue+ subscription so you can do the proctored tests in the comfort and convenience of your home or hotel room and I would see if you can get your work to pay for it.
posted by potrzebie at 2:19 PM on May 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

The Cue test has only received FDA emergency use authorization like so many other COVID tests, not the usual FDA marketing clearance that I think OP is implying by saying they are 'FDA approved'). So the data submitted by Cue to FDA to receive authorization are not neccessarily more robust than all the other EUA tests.

Not that this is problematic vs other tests on the market right now - only two RT-PCR tests by BioFire have made received the 'regular' marketing clearance. Just that Cue is not ahead of the pack in this regard.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 2:39 PM on May 8, 2022

Response by poster: Ah yep I goofed in my question and wrote "approved" but I do know they have the same emergency-use authorization status as other home tests, which is not the same as FDA approval.

I included that detail not because I thought it gave them an advantage over other tests, just as one of the factors I'm using to make the decision, confirmation that they're they're probably not fake/trash/ineffective tests.
posted by rhiannonstone at 2:53 PM on May 8, 2022

They are extremely high quality tests. One of my daughters friends parents gets them for free from Google. They are certainly annoying if you are trying to test a whole family before a get together. We generally use binax nows, so we are good to go in 15 minutes, running 3 in parallel, but it takes them over an hour to test a family of four.
posted by rockindata at 3:11 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: After you use enough you could also turn them into a hard drive.

I, too, get these for free from work. But if I'd paid for the ones I've used I think I'd feel like it was money well-spent? It's hard to say - in particular I trust a "negative" result more than I would if it were from a rapid test, which is what I need in order to feel like I'm not at risk of exposing other people.

It was also nice to have it for people who came to visit but were worried they might present a risk - a negative result made it easier for them to relax indoors. This was a bigger issue before everyone in question was vaccinated/boosted.
posted by ethand at 4:47 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'd also add that Cue tests are much more sensitive than antigen tests so if you have someone asymptomatic with a very slight infection you may find yourself with a positive test on your hands that seems really dubious but feel obligated to quarantine anyway.

I think it's important to clarify for all that false positives are extremely rare for any COVID test that have emergency FDA authorization. There is no such thing as just having a 'very slight infection' that is not contagious. A positive is a positive. Please carry on with the discussion of Cue tests, but we need to present best medical evidence in these public forums.
posted by latkes at 4:55 PM on May 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I think it's important to clarify for all that false positives are extremely rare for any COVID test that have emergency FDA authorization. There is no such thing as just having a 'very slight infection' that is not contagious. A positive is a positive. Please carry on with the discussion of Cue tests, but we need to present best medical evidence in these public forums.

It is not at all true that testing positive (especially on a PCR-like test) means you are infectious. Unfortunately, it is basically impossible to tell if you are infectious or not, but "very slight infection that is not contagious" is absolutely a thing that can happen (this is theoretically the value of rapid tests, that they are better at distinguishing infectious period, because more sensitive tests will stay positive long past when a person is infectious). "False positive" for infectiousness is common in PCR tests which is why people who have recovered from covid are instructed not to take them for 90 days post recovery because they can still be positive.
posted by ch1x0r at 6:13 PM on May 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's a good point! I'm thinking of postives after recent exposure. Carry on.
posted by latkes at 6:30 PM on May 8, 2022

Yes, thanks for the clarification ch1x0r. The point I was trying to make is that it's so sensitive that it'll turn up positive for cases where your friends with antigen tests won't detect anything, and all the guidelines for how to react to test results are calibrated to tests with the sensitivity of widely available antigen tests. So you end up having to make these weird choices about, do I follow the negative antigen test, or the positive Cue? How many of each should I do to be sure? Etc. Having essentially a home PCR rig is both a blessing and a curse.
posted by potrzebie at 7:46 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: We’ve had a CUE machine for a while now, here are some thoughts:

In our experience the CUE just returned the positive faster than an antigen test. We have yet to have or know anyone who didn’t end up with a positive antigen test 1-2 days after the positive CUE.

Due to a significant class outbreak that led to a household outbreak :( we’ve gone through more than 20 CUE tests in the last month in our home (fortunately supplied by work). I like having the confidence that a negative from the CUE was an accurate test reading that made us feel more comfortable in our decisions on when to end quarantine etc.

Downsides are as mentioned, very expensive out of pocket and takes 20ish minutes per test. Like a previous poster above we’ve found a 10-20% test failure rate but for the last several months there is now an option in the app to click and order a replacement cartridge (very helpful if you are paying $50-$75 per test).

We’ve had one good friend (who’s a doctor and has been very worried about bringing COVID home with her) buy one for her own family after using ours and liking it.
posted by saradarlin at 2:13 AM on May 9, 2022

Since I have a CUE at home, I got an email from them today saying that single tests are now offered for $99 each at Albertsons.
posted by ziggly at 11:24 AM on May 9, 2022

Response by poster: Well, I had a work benefit that covered it and I didn't have another use for, so I bought a reader and a membership, which came with 10 free tests (and the reader was hugely discounted). Definitely takes a little while to read, but it's just me in my household so no one else has to wait 20+ minutes for me to finish. And my first TWO tests were marked invalid, but I was able to quickly and easily order free replacements--they showed up within 2 days. The third gave a valid result!

I think it's worth it for extra peace of mind for me, as a supplement to antigen tests. I don't anticipate issues with a conflict between the Cue and an antigen test because no matter what, if I take two tests in short succession and one of them is positive, I'm going to default to assuming the positive is correct and take the necessary precautions.

Thanks everyone for the input, it was all super helpful!
posted by rhiannonstone at 10:24 PM on May 16, 2022