Caruana G, Lebrun LL, Aebischer O, Opota O, Urbano L, de Rham M, Marchetti O, Greub G. The dark side of SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen testing: screening asymptomatic patients.
New Microbes New Infect 2021;
42:100899. [PMID:
34007453 PMCID:
PMC8119292 DOI:
10.1016/j.nmni.2021.100899]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2021] [Accepted: 05/09/2021] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Several reports showed SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen tests (RATs) performances among COVID-19 symptomatic subjects in outpatient settings during periods of highest incidence of infections and high rates of hospital admissions, but few data are present for asymptomatic patients. We investigated the role of RATs in an emergency department, as a novel screening tool before admission for COVID-19 asymptomatic patients. A total of 116 patients were screened on admission in a 250-bed community hospital in Morges, Switzerland. RAT detected 2/7 RT-PCR-positive patients and delivered two false-positive results. These data suggest the non-fiability of RATs screening in this clinical scenario.
Collapse