Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

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neu in reply to @atz

For the lateral flow testing kits (same swab method, but different test to PCR), the BMJ found that the sensitivity (True positive rate) dropped from 73% with healthcare staff to 58% with members of the public.

The evaluation found that the test performed best when used by laboratory scientists when the sensitivity was 79% (156/197 positive: 79.2% (95% confidence interval 72.8% to 84.6%)).

Sensitivity dropped to 73% when used by trained healthcare staff (92/126 positive: 73.0% (64.3% to 80.5%)) and to 58% with self-trained members of the public (214/372 positive: 57.5% (52.3% to 62.6%)).

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4469

PCR test have a much higher sensitivity to start with but presumably there will be a similar drop off due to a relatively poorer swabbing technique by the self-trained public.

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atz in reply to @neu

Thanks. Very interesting.... I imagine that’s why there are no self-administered tests here.

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in reply to @atz

I imagine that’s why there are no self-administered tests here.

It's worth noting that that is a report about one brand of one type of, relatively uncommon, test, which has already been reported as being less accurate.

Here's a study on the method of collection generally: "Patient-collected tongue, nasal, and mid-turbinate swabs for SARS-CoV-2 yield equivalent sensitivity to health care worker collected nasopharyngeal swabs" - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20050005v1

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