Active outbreaks
If you actively in an outbreak when he sees you, the doctor will take cultures with a swab, which will be tested at a laboratory. This is not always decisive, as there are sometimes false negatives where someone is told they do not have HSV when they do as the test was misleading.Blood tests for HSV1 and HSV2 will tell the doctor if you have antibodies, which states definitely whether or not you have been infected. They cannot tell which type of herpes you have (1 or 2), only that the infection is present.
