Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

November 25, 2020

The Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Tests in the View of Large-Scale Testing

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  • A comparison of two point-of-care antigen tests to PCR testing concluded that the low sensitivity of antigen testing contributes to a significant risk of false negatives when used in symptomatic or asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. The two antigen tests exhibited sensitivities of 0.66 and 0.62 among all COVID-19 patients, 0.74 and 0.69 among symptomatic patients, and 0.13 for both tests among patients whose positive samples had a low concentration of viral RNA (PCR threshold cycles above 30). The authors suggest that the use of antigen testing for screening purposes would require frequent repetition of tests to control transmission.

Drevinek et al. (Nov 24, 2020). The Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Tests in the View of Large-Scale Testing. Pre-print downloaded Nov. 25 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.23.20237198