Persistence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Omicron Variant in Children and Utility of Rapid Antigen Testing as an Indicator of Culturable Virus.

Abstract

We screened 65 longitudinally collected nasal swab samples from 31 children aged 0-16 years who were positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 Omicron BA.1. By day 7 after onset of symptoms, 48% of children remained positive by rapid antigen test. In a sample subset, we found 100% correlation between antigen test results and virus culture.