Whole Care Home Testing for Covid-19 in a Local Authority Area in the United Kingdom
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Abstract
Objectives
To describe the point prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in care homes reporting low numbers of cases of COVID-19.
Design
A cross-sectional study of care homes, ascertaining perceived disease burden using interviews with care home managers and SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in residents and staff using nose and throat swabbing.
Setting
15 Care homes in Essex, United Kingdom, all of which had reported either zero or one case of COVID-19 to the Health Protection Team.
Participants
912 residents and staff of care homes were tested. Residents were eligible to be tested regardless of symptoms.
Main outcome measure
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in residents and staff.
Results
In the 15 care homes studied, SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 23 (5.2%) of 441 residents. Of these 23, 21/23 (91%) were asymptomatic as reported by the care home managers. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 8/471 (1.7%) of staff. This differs from that in residents (p=0.003).
Conclusions
The study’s findings suggest that symptoms, as reported by care home managers, are an insensitive method of defining the extent of SARS-CoV-2 infection in nursing homes. Viral detection from residents is more common than from staff. Microbiological screening is a more sensitive method for defining the extent of SARS-CoV-2 in care homes than managerial reporting of resident symptoms.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.06.20162859: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: 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 …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.06.20162859: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
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: 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.
- 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.
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