Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

February 9, 2021

Clinical and Economic Impact of Widespread Rapid Testing to Decrease SARS-CoV-2 Transmission

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[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A transmission model calibrated to the US population suggests that implementing weekly home-based SARS-CoV-2 antigen testing could avert 4 million infections and 19,000 deaths over 60 days while being cost-effective. While a scenario with testing could cost up to $21.5 billion, lower inpatient costs and fewer workdays lost could offset the costs and yield an incremental cost per death averted of $1.1 million (for reference, the commonly accepted willingness-to-pay values per statistical life saved are between $5-17 million).

Paltiel et al. (Feb 8, 2021). Clinical and Economic Impact of Widespread Rapid Testing to Decrease SARS-CoV-2 Transmission. Pre-print downloaded Feb 9 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.06.21251270