"The effectiveness of rapid antigen test-based for SARS-CoV-2 detection in nursing homes in Valencia, Spain"

The usefulness of the PANBIO ™ COVID-19 Ag rapid test for SARS-CoV-2 infection detection has not been widely studied, especially in specific population groups such as the elderly who are institutionalized. Rapid diagnostic tests have the potential to benefit testing strategies, as they have short turnaround times, they are cheap, simple to perform and can be used in decentralized testing. The objective of this study is to show the performance of the PANBIO™ COVID-19 Ag Rapid test device conducted at geriatric institutions and to compare results to those obtained from RT-PCR. A total of 448 individuals were enrolled in the study, including both residents and employees. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected for both PANBIO™ COVID-19 Ag Rapid test and RT-PCR testing. All the samples were analyzed by specialized microbiologists. A total of 117 out of 448 individuals (26%) tested positive by RT-PCR, of whom 99 (85%) returned positive Antigen test results. There were 18 Antigen negative cases with positive RT-PCR results. Accordingly, concordance between RT-PCR and Antigen test results was acceptable (K index, 0.89; 95% IC 0.8455–0.9345). Overall sensitivity and specificity of Antigen test was 85% and 100%, respectively. When defining RT-PCR CT positivity on a cut-off value of 35, LFA sensitivity was 90%. In case a cut-off value of 30 was used, LFA would increase up to 99%. In this real-life evaluation of the PANBIO™ COVID-Ag rapid test, the assay reliably identified SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with low CT-values by RT-PCR. False negative results were observed only at high CT-values, meaning low viral loads in nasopharyngeal samples.

Impact of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Candidaemia, Invasive Aspergillosis and Antifungal Consumption in a Tertiary Hospital

In addition to the increase in fungal infections that has been observed in the last few decades, it has been reported that severe clinical COVID-19 can increase the risk of invasive fungal infections. The main objective of this study was to evaluate if there had been an increase in candidaemia and invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) cases since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Data were retrospectively collected from April 2019 to March 2021, from patients admitted to Consorcio Hospital General Universitario de Valencia (Spain). A total of 152 candidaemia cases (56 of which were due to Candida auris) and 108 possible IPA cases were detected. A great increase in candidaemia cases was produced during the first and the third epidemic waves of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (June 2020, and January 2021, respectively), while an increase in IPA cases was produced during the third wave. The 28-day mortality rates in patients affected by candidaemia and IPA increased in 2020 and 2021. C. auris has displaced the other Candida species, becoming the most isolated Candida species in blood cultures since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Antifungal consumption increased in 2020 when compared to 2019, especially echinocandins, voriconazole and isavuconazole.

The first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Spain was associated with early introductions and fast spread of a dominating genetic variant

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the world radically since 2020. Spain was one of the European countries with the highest incidence during the first wave. As a part of a consortium to monitor and study the evolution of the epidemic, we sequenced 2,170 samples, diagnosed mostly before lockdown measures. Here, we identified at least 500 introductions from multiple international sources and documented the early rise of two dominant Spanish epidemic clades (SECs), probably amplified by superspreading events. Both SECs were related closely to the initial Asian variants of SARS-CoV-2 and spread widely across Spain. We inferred a substantial reduction in the effective reproductive number of both SECs due to public-health interventions (R_e < 1), also reflected in the replacement of SECs by a new variant over the summer of 2020. In summary, we reveal a notable difference in the initial genetic makeup of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain compared with other European countries and show evidence to support the effectiveness of lockdown measures in controlling virus spread, even for the most successful genetic variants.