Performance Characteristics of a Rapid Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Antigen Detection Assay at a Public Plaza Testing Site in San Francisco.
J Infect Dis 2021;
223:1139-1144. [PMID:
33394052 PMCID:
PMC7799021 DOI:
10.1093/infdis/jiaa802]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 102] [Impact Index Per Article: 34.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2020] [Accepted: 12/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
We evaluated the performance of the Abbott BinaxNOW rapid antigen test for coronavirus disease 2019 (Binax-CoV2) to detect virus among persons, regardless of symptoms, at a public plaza site of ongoing community transmission. Titration with cultured severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 yielded a human observable threshold between 1.6 × 104-4.3 × 104 viral RNA copies (cycle threshold [Ct], 30.3–28.8). Among 878 subjects tested, 3% (26 of 878) were positive by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction, of whom 15 of 26 had a Ct <30, indicating high viral load; of these, 40% (6 of 15) were asymptomatic. Using this Ct threshold (<30) for Binax-CoV2 evaluation, the sensitivity of Binax-CoV2 was 93.3% (95% confidence interval, 68.1%–99.8%) (14 of 15) and the specificity was 99.9% (99.4%–99.9%) (855 of 856).
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