Factors associated with carrying out molecular tests for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in the State of Espírito Santo, Brazil

ABSTRACT

Backgroung Brazil was slow to implement an expanded testing policy for COVID-19, which may have affected the most vulnerable population's access to testing services. Objective: to evaluate the factors associated with performing the molecular test for COVID-19. Methods: cross-sectional study of secondary data from the COVID-19 panel in the state of Espírito Santo. COVID-19 suspicion notification forms were included between September 11, 2020 and March 2, 2021. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI95%). Results: 419,771 notification forms were analyzed. The prevalence of performing the molecular teste for COVID-19 was 81.1% (CI95% 81.0-81.2). Elderly (OR= 2.70 – CI95% 2.56-2.85), health professional (OR=1.43 – CI95% 1.36-1.50), chronic cardiovascular disease (OR=1.13 – CI95% 1.09-1.17), diabetes mellitus (OR=1.07 – CI95% 1.01-1.14) and hospitalization (OR=5.95 – CI95% 4.53;7.82) were more likely to have undergone the molecular test. Male sex (OR=0.96 – CI95% 0.94-0.98), black skin color (OR=0.75 – CI95% 0.73-0.78), yellow skin color (OR=0.74 – CI95% 0.71-0.77), residing in the northern health region (OR=0.37 – CI95% 0.36-0.39) and the homeless population (OR=0.76 – CI95% 0.67-0.85) had the lowest chance of having undergone the molecular test. Conclusion: Social, economic, contextual factors and the risk of aggravation of the disease were associated with carrying out the molecular test for COVID-19 in the state of Espírito Santo. Actions are needed to guarantee the access of the most vulnerable population to molecular testing. © The authors (2023), this article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. 0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http//creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1. 0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.