Abstract
High testing rates limit COVID-19 transmission. Attempting to increase testing rates, Stovner District in Oslo, Norway, combined door-to-door campaigns with easy access testing facilities. We studied the intervention’s impact on COVID-19 testing rates. The Stovner District administration executed three door-to-door campaigns promoting COVID-19 testing accompanied by drop-in mobile COVID-19 testing facilities in different areas at 2-week intervals. We calculated testing rates pre- and post-campaigns using data from the Norwegian emergency preparedness register for COVID-19 (Beredt C19). We applied a difference-in-difference approach using ordinary least square regression models and robust standard errors to estimate changes in COVID-19 testing rates. Door-to-door visits reached around one of three households. Intervention and comparison areas had identical testing rates before the intervention, and we observed an increase in intervention areas after the campaigns. We estimate a 43% increase in testing rates over the first three days following the door-to-door campaigns (p = 0.28), corresponding to an additional 79 (95% confidence interval, −54 to 175) people tested. Considering the shape of the time series curves and the large effect estimate, we find it highly likely that the campaigns had a substantial positive impact on COVID-19 testing rates, despite a p-value above the conventional levels for statistical significance. The results and the feasibility of the intervention suggest that it may be worth implementing in similar settings.
Highlights
We found little or no difference in testing rates when we compared the one geographical unit (Stig) where a pop-up mobile COVID-19 testing facility was placed for three days in January, without an accompanying door-to-door campaign encouraging COVID-19 testing, with the other areas in the Stovner District (Figure 6)
We found little or no change in testing rates in the area where a mobile testing facility was placed without a doorto-door campaign promoting COVID-19 testing
COVID-19 testing rates differed 0.28% in difference before and after, in the areas with and without, door-to-door campaigns encouraging testing accompanied by mobile testing facilities
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In Norway, the test-isolate-trace-and-quarantine strategy has been a key part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. High testing rates are essential to break chains of infection. During the first wave of the pandemic, the national strategy only encouraged testing of symptomatic individuals with a high risk of exposure, due to low test capacity. Everyone with any symptom of COVID-19 has been encouraged to take the test [1]
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