Active Surveillance of Asymptomatic, Presymptomatic, and Oligosymptomatic SARS-CoV-2-Infected Individuals in Communities Inhabiting Closed or Semi-closed Institutions

Frontiers in Medicine

article

Nicolás Ambrosis¹  Alejandra Giordano¹  Min Chih Lin²  Anibal Lodeiro¹  Felipe Marceca²  Nicolás Pregi²  Federico Remes Lenicov⁷  Luciana Rocha-Viegas²  Erika Rudi¹  Guillermo Solovey²  Eugenia Zurita¹  Pablo Martin Aispuro¹  Adali Pecci²  Roberto Etchenique²  Daniela Hozbor¹  Keila Belhart¹  Daniela Bottero¹  Renée Leonor Crisp²  María Virginia Dansey²  Magali Gabrielli¹  Oscar Filevich^1,10  Valeria Genoud² 

[1] Laboratorio VacSal, Instituto de Biotecnología y Biología Molecular, Universidad Nacional de La Plata y CCT La Plata-CONICET;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Departamento de Química Biológica;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto del Cálculo;Laboratorio de Genética, Universidad Nacional de La Plata;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Departamento de Matemática, Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas “Luis Santaló”;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y SIDA;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Fisiología;Universidad de Buenos Aires, Departamento de Química Inorgánica, Instituto de Química Física de los Materiales;Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín

关键词: SARS-CoV-2;    COVID-19;    coronavirus;    pooling;    RT-qPCR;    asymptomatic;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmed.2021.640688

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Background: The high COVID-19 dissemination rate demands active surveillance to identify asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and oligosymptomatic (APO) SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals. This is of special importance in communities inhabiting closed or semi-closed institutions such as residential care homes, prisons, neuropsychiatric hospitals, etc., where risk people are in close contact. Thus, a pooling approach—where samples are mixed and tested as single pools—is an attractive strategy to rapidly detect APO-infected in these epidemiological scenarios. Materials and Methods: This study was done at different pandemic periods between May 28 and August 31 2020 in 153 closed or semi-closed institutions in the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina). We setup pooling strategy in two stages: first a pool-testing followed by selective individual-testing according to pool results. Samples included in negative pools were presumed as negative, while samples from positive pools were re-tested individually for positives identification. Results: Sensitivity in 5-sample or 10-sample pools was adequate since only 2 Ct values were increased with regard to single tests on average. Concordance between 5-sample or 10-sample pools and individual-testing was 100% in the Ct ≤ 36. We tested 4,936 APO clinical samples in 822 pools, requiring 86–50% fewer tests in low-to-moderate prevalence settings compared to individual testing. Conclusions: By this strategy we detected three COVID-19 outbreaks at early stages in these institutions, helping to their containment and increasing the likelihood of saving lives in such places where risk groups are concentrated.

【 授权许可】

CC BY