March 9, 2021

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

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

Keywords (Tags): antigen, testing

• A transmission model calibrated to the US population suggests that implementing weekly home-based SARS-CoV-2 antigen testing could avert 2.8 million infections and 15,700 deaths over 60 days. In contrast, a scenario with no testing anticipates 11.6 million infections and 119,000 deaths over the same time period. While the scenario with testing could cost an additional $22.3 million compared to the scenario with no testing, lower inpatient costs and fewer workdays lost could offset the costs and yield incremental cost-effectiveness ratios of $8,000 per infection averted and $1.4 million per death averted (for reference, the commonly accepted willingness-to-pay values per statistical life saved are between $5-17 million). [EDITORIAL NOTE: A pre-print related to this manuscript was summarized on February 9, 2020]

Paltiel et al. (Mar 9, 2021). Clinical and Economic Effects of Widespread Rapid Testing to Decrease SARS-CoV-2 Transmission. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.7326/M21-0510