Abstract:
Papers who discuss the benefits and limitations of SARS-CoV-2
antigen rapid detection tests (AgRDTs) for scaling up diagnostic capacities in different settings. As recent evaluations suggest, Ag-RDTs can reliably detect patients during the initial infective phase of COVID-19 (when patients have high viral loads). As the authors emphasise, the screening of asymptomatic individuals in low-prevalence settings is hampered by imperfect specificity. The dilemma that most detected cases represent false positives rather than true infections might require a twotier approach with molecular
confirmation, affecting the practicality and acceptance of such a strategy. Here we suggest alternative strategies to optimise the use of AgRDTs in asymptomatic populations with low positivity likelihood.
