Establishment of a specimen panel for the decentralised technical evaluation of the sensitivity of 31 rapid diagnostic tests for SARS-CoV-2 antigen, Germany, September 2020 to April 2021.
Euro Surveill
; 26(44)2021 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1504591
ABSTRACT
IntroductionThe detection of SARS-CoV-2 with rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) has become an important tool to identify infected people and break infection chains. These RDT are usually based on antigen detection in a lateral flow approach.AimWe aimed to establish a comprehensive specimen panel for the decentralised technical evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid diagnostic tests.MethodsWhile for PCR diagnostics the validation of a PCR assay is well established, there is no common validation strategy for antigen tests, including RDT. In this proof-of-principle study we present the establishment of a panel of 50 pooled clinical specimens that cover a SARS-CoV-2 concentration range from 1.1â¯×â¯109 to 420 genome copies per mL of specimen. The panel was used to evaluate 31 RDT in up to six laboratories.ResultsOur results show that there is considerable variation in the detection limits and the clinical sensitivity of different RDT. We show that the best RDT can be applied to reliably identify infectious individuals who present with SARS-CoV-2 loads down to 106 genome copies per mL of specimen. For the identification of infected individuals with SARS-CoV-2 loads corresponding to less than 106 genome copies per mL, only three RDT showed a clinical sensitivity of more than 60%.ConclusionsSensitive RDT can be applied to identify infectious individuals with high viral loads but not to identify all infected individuals.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
1560-7917.ES.2021.26.44.2100442
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