Dynamics of RT-qPCR SARS-CoV-2 Detection Rates Prior to and After Symptom Onset

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Abstract

Effective RT-qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 is essential for treatment, surveillance and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent meta-analysis 1 suggested that testing prior to the onset of symptoms is likely to miss the majority of infected individuals. These findings cast severe doubts on the effectiveness of mass screening efforts intended to detect SARS-CoV-2 prior to the onset of symptoms and decrease community transmissions from pre-/asymptomatic individuals 2–4 . However, alternative analyses and additional data described herein refine these estimates and suggest that many SARS-CoV-2 infections could potentially be detected prior to symptom onset.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.09.20149245: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


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    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.
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    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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