Feasibility and utility of rapid antigen testing for COVID-19 in a university residence: a cross sectional study

  1. Sabrina T. Wong
  2. Marc Romney
  3. Nancy Matic
  4. Kristen Haase
  5. Manon Ranger
  6. Ranjit Dhari
  7. Frances Affleck
  8. Elsie Tan
  9. Innocent Ndateba
  10. Erica Tobias
  11. Elizabeth Saewyc
  12. Michael Schwandt
  13. Don Sin

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Abstract

Importance

Understanding feasibility of rapid testing in congregate living setting provides critical data to reduce the risk of outbreaks in these settings.

Objective

Use rapid antigen screening to detect SARS-CoV-2 in an asymptomatic group of university students and staff.

Design

Cross-sectional

Setting

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Participants

Students and staff living or working in congregate housing.

Intervention

Health care professional administered rapid antigen test

Main Outcomes and measures

Use of BD Veritor rapid antigen testing and asymptomatic participants’ experiences with rapid testing

Results

A total of 3536 BD Veritor tests were completed in 1141 unique individuals. One third of participants completed between two to four tests and 21% were screened five or more times. The mean number of tests completed per person was three. The mean length of time between those who had more than one test was seven days. There were eight false positives and 25 PCR confirmed COVID-19 positive individuals identified through this work. All individuals reported having no symptoms that they attributed to COVID-19. Almost all (n=22, 88%) COVID-19 positive cases were found in male participants. A total of 86 additional students from multiple different student residences (n=9) were asked to self-isolate while they waited for their COVID-19 diagnostic test results. An average of seven additional students positive for COVID-19 living in congregate housing were identified through contact tracing by finding one positive case.

Conclusions and relevance

Rapid testing is a relatively inexpensive and operationally easy method of identifying asymptomatic individuals with COVID-19.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.24.21257732: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot 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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.05.24.21257732v1 on medRxiv