Implementing SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Testing in the Emergency Ward of a Swiss University Hospital: The INCREASE Study
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Following the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) authorization of the rapid antigen test (RAT), we implemented the use of the RAT in the emergency ward of our university hospital for patients’ cohorting. RAT triaging in association with RT-PCR allowed us to promptly isolate positive patients and save resources. Among 532 patients, overall sensitivities were 48.3% for Exdia and 41.2% for Standard Q®, PanbioTM and BD Veritor™. All RATs exhibited specificity above 99%. Sensitivity increased to 74.6%, 66.2%, 66.2% and 64.8% for Exdia, Standard Q®, PanbioTM and BD Veritor™, respectively, for viral loads above 105 copies/mL, to 100%, 97.8%, 96.6% and 95.6% for viral loads above 106 copies/mL and 100% for viral loads above 107 copies/mL. Sensitivity was significantly higher for patients with symptoms onset within four days (74.3%, 69.2%, 69.2% and 64%, respectively) versus patients with the evolution of symptoms longer than four days (36.8%, 21.1%, 21.1% and 23.7%, respectively). Among COVID-19 asymptomatic patients, sensitivity was 33%. All Immunoglobulin-A-positive patients resulted negative for RAT. The RAT might represent a useful resource in selected clinical settings as a complementary tool in RT-PCR for rapid patient triaging, but the lower sensitivity, especially in late presenters and COVID-19 asymptomatic subjects, must be taken into account.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.10.21250915: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Field Sample Permit: Study design of RAT comparison: The performance comparison study of antigen tests was carried out on a prospective collection of upper respiratory specimens from all patients presenting at the emergency unit of CHUV.
IRB: According to national law (Swiss Federal Act on Human Research), the performance and publishing the results of such a project can be done without asking the permission of the competent research ethics committee Role of the funding source: The authors did not receive any financial support for this work.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.10.21250915: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics Field Sample Permit: Study design of RAT comparison: The performance comparison study of antigen tests was carried out on a prospective collection of upper respiratory specimens from all patients presenting at the emergency unit of CHUV.
IRB: According to national law (Swiss Federal Act on Human Research), the performance and publishing the results of such a project can be done without asking the permission of the competent research ethics committee Role of the funding source: The authors did not receive any financial support for this work.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis 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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
-
