Diagnostic yield of serial SARS-CoV-2 testing in hospitalized patients.

Abstract

The detection rate of SARS-CoV-2 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) varies depending on the time since exposure and is highest around the time of symptom onset. It is conceivable that patients who are incubating SARS-CoV-2 may screen negative at admission and develop transmissible but undetected asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic disease while in hospital. The incidence of COVID-19 in Montreal, Canada started to increase in December 2020. In anticipation of a much larger rise after the holiday period, the McGill University Health Centre implemented serial SARS-CoV-2 testing for all admitted patients on day 5 and 10 after admission, to evaluate the clinical utility of serial SARS-CoV-2 testing among patients who test negative on admission screening. We retrospectively analyzed the diagnostic yield of SARS-CoV-2 serial testing for patients admitted between January 4, 2021 and April 30, 2021. A total of 1,505 patients underwent serial testing at day 5 and 841 patients underwent serial testing at day 10. Only 10 patients were positive on serial testing at day 5 and only 12 patients were positive on serial testing at day 10, for a yield at day 5 and day 10 of 0.7% and 1.4%, respectively. The yield of serial SARS-CoV-2 testing was 0.7% at day 5 and 1.4% at day 10. We found that the yield of serial testing was higher when the community incidence was higher and could be considered in this situation. Policies which target repeat testing towards symptomatic or exposed individuals appear to be effective in identifying those with a positive test while admitted but testing negative upon admission.