Screening for SARS-CoV-2 infections in daycare facilities for children in a large city in Germany
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Abstract
Background
The role of pre-school children as a source and distributor of SARS-CoV-2 infections is still unclear. Daycare facilities that care particularly for young children with limited hygiene measures may contribute to the infection dynamics during the pandemic. The aim of this study was to implement and evaluate a voluntary SARS-CoV-2 screening program in daycare facilities.
Methods
The study was conducted over a period of 4 weeks, from June 10 th to July 7 th 2020. The aim was to screen a representative group of 5000 individuals (children and staff at a ratio 3:1) attending daycare facilities in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia. Tests were performed twice per week with oral rinsing water as sample material for the detection of SARS-CoV-2-RNA by molecular pool testing.
Results
A total number of 5210 participants (75.9% children and 24.1% staff) from 115 day care centers participated in the study. Of a total of 34,068 returned samples (81.7%) during the study period, only one SARS-CoV-2 infection of a child was detected in the study cohort with one likely secondary infection within the daycare facility. Of note, during the study phase, no increase of SARS- CoV-2 infections was observed in daycare center compared to the overall incidence in Düsseldorf.
Conclusions
A voluntary screening program for SARS-CoV-2 infections could successfully be implemented in daycare facilities. Although the low overall incidence during the study period precludes firm conclusions, there was no evidence for increased transmission in children attending daycare facilities compared to the general population of Düsseldorf.
Summary
SARS-CoV-2 screening programs in daycare facilities may help to detect asymptomatic infections at an early stage and thereby support containment. Here, a large screening study was evaluated suggesting similar infection rates in daycare facilities compared to the general population.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.26.21252510: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: All participants signed a consent form and the study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Düsseldorf.
IRB: All participants signed a consent form and the study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Düsseldorf.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 …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.26.21252510: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement Consent: All participants signed a consent form and the study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Düsseldorf.
IRB: All participants signed a consent form and the study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Düsseldorf.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 found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
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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