Rapid point-of-care testing for SARS-CoV-2 in a community screening setting shows low sensitivity

Abstract Objective With the current SARS-CoV2 outbreak, countless tests need to be performed on potential symptomatic individuals, contacts and travellers. The gold standard is a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)–based system taking several hours to confirm positivity. For effective public health containment measures, this time span is too long. We therefore evaluated a rapid test in a high-prevalence community setting. Study design Thirty-nine randomly selected individuals at a COVID-19 screening centre were simultaneously tested via qPCR and a rapid test. Ten previously diagnosed individuals with known SARS-CoV-2 infection were also analysed. Methods The evaluated rapid test is an IgG/IgM–based test for SARS-CoV-2 with a time to result of 20 min. Two drops of blood are needed for the test performance. Results Of 49 individuals, 22 tested positive by repeated qPCR. In contrast, the rapid test detected only eight of those positive correctly (sensitivity: 36.4%). Of the 27 qPCR-negative individuals, 24 were detected correctly (specificity: 88.9%). Conclusion Given the low sensitivity, we recommend not to rely on an antibody-based rapid test for public health measures such as community screenings.