Norwich COVID-19 testing initiative pilot: evaluating the feasibility of asymptomatic testing on a university campus

  1. T Berger Gillam
  2. J Cole
  3. K Gharbi
  4. E Angiolini
  5. T Barker
  6. P Bickerton
  7. T Brabbs
  8. J Chin
  9. E Coen
  10. S Cossey
  11. R Davey
  12. R Davidson
  13. A Durrant
  14. D Edwards
  15. N Hall
  16. S Henderson
  17. M Hitchcock
  18. N Irish
  19. J Lipscombe
  20. G Jones
  21. G Parr
  22. S Rushworth
  23. N Shearer
  24. R Smith
  25. N Steel

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Abstract

Background

There is a high prevalence of COVID-19 in university-age students, who are returning to campuses. There is little evidence regarding the feasibility of universal, asymptomatic testing to help control outbreaks in this population. This study aimed to pilot mass COVID-19 testing on a university research park, to assess the feasibility and acceptability of scaling up testing to all staff and students.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional feasibility study on a university research park in the East of England. All staff and students (5625) were eligible to participate. All participants were offered four PCR swabs, which they self-administered over two weeks. Outcome measures included uptake, drop-out rate, positivity rates, participant acceptability measures, laboratory processing measures, data collection and management measures.

Results

798 (76%) of 1053 who registered provided at least one swab; 687 (86%) provided all four; 792 (99%) of 798 who submitted at least one swab had all negative results and 6 participants had one inconclusive result. There were no positive results. 458 (57%) of 798 participants responded to a post-testing survey, demonstrating a mean acceptability score of 4.51/5, with five being the most positive.

Conclusions

Repeated self-testing for COVID-19 using PCR is feasible and acceptable to a university population.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.22.20199455: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethics approval (no. 2019/20-140) was obtained from the UEA research ethics committee.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Results data was processed from these samples using Python 3 scripts developed at EI and running on virtual infrastructure provided by the CyVerse UK cloud.
    Python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Both universal testing and the current UK national public health strategy of testing symptomatic people via a local testing site have strengths and weaknesses. The current national strategy of symptomatic testing is adequate when there are few cases in the community, and is cheaper in the short term, but risks allowing undetected spread of COVID-19 when cases start to rise in a community, particularly when results take more than 24 hours to be reported. The main potential problem with universal testing is that it may generate false positives, and therefore unnecessary contact tracing and isolation. It is also more expensive in the short term. There were no false positives out of 3,046 tests in this study. The main advantage of universal testing is that it can identify infectious asymptomatic cases and isolate them before they can infect others in the community. This is a major benefit on a campus university with large numbers of students in a community where isolation and social spacing may be challenging to maintain, and where a major outbreak would have serious consequences for students’ education, the university, and the local community. Limitations of this study: Limitations of the study include the relatively low uptake and the low prevalence of COVID-19 in this population, which meant that processes for managing positive results could not be tested. At the time of the study, community prevalence of COVID-19 was approximately 1 in 1700 people(15). As this was a self-sele...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1093/pubmed/fdaa194
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.22.20199455v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.22.20199455v1 on medRxiv