Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

February 24, 2021

Self-Testing for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Infection with Rapid Antigen Tests

Category:

Topic:

Keywords (Tags): ,

[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] Self-testing for SARS-CoV-2 using rapid antigen detection kits (RDT) was found to have a high specificity (99.4%) and relatively high sensitivity (78%) to identify individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 RNA below a low cycle-time (CT) value threshold.  Low CT values are associated with high viral load and the authors suggest that is a as a proxy for contagiousness. Factors independently associated with false-negative results were older age, low viral load, and difficulty with self-testing.

Stohr et al. (Feb 23, 2021). Self-Testing for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Infection with Rapid Antigen Tests. Pre-print downloaded Feb 24 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.21.21252153