Testing out of quarantine

  1. Lucy D’Agostino McGowan
  2. Elizabeth C. Lee
  3. Kyra H. Grantz
  4. Lauren M. Kucirka
  5. Emily S. Gurley
  6. Justin Lessler

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Abstract

Since SARS-CoV-2 emerged, a 14-day quarantine has been recommended based on COVID-19”s incubation period. Using an RT-PCR or rapid antigen test to “test out” of quarantine is a frequently proposed strategy to shorten duration without increasing risk. We calculated the probability that infected individuals test negative for SARS-CoV-2 on a particular day post-infection and remain symptom free for some period of time. We estimate that an infected individual has a 20.1% chance (95% CI 9.8-32.6) of testing RT-PCR negative on day five post-infection and remaining asymptomatic until day seven. We also show that the added information a test provides decreases as we move further from the test date, hence a less sensitive test that returns rapid results is often preferable to a more sensitive test with a delay.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.29.21250764: (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.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    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.

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    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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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.29.21250764 on medRxiv