Impact of community asymptomatic rapid antigen testing on covid-19 related hospital admissions: synthetic control study.
other · Level III
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36418047.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1136/bmj-2022-071374 and PMC identifier 9682337.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
To analyse the impact of voluntary rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 antigen in Liverpool city on covid-19 related hospital admissions. Synthetic control analysis comparing hospital admissions for small areas in the intervention population with a group of control areas weighted to be similar for past covid-19 related hospital admission rates and sociodemographic factors. Liverpool city, UK, 6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021, under the intervention of Covid-SMART (systematic meaningful asymptomatic repeated testing) voluntary, open access supervised self-testing with lateral flow devices, compared with control areas selected from the rest of England. General population of Liverpool (n=498 042) and a synthetic control population from the rest of England. Weekly covid-19 related hospital admissions for neighbourhoods in England. The introduction of community testing was associated with a 43% (95% confidence interval 29% to 57%) reduction (146 (96 to 192) in total) in covid-19 related hospital admissions in Liverpool compared with the synthetic control population (non-adjacent set of neighbourhoods with aggregate trends in covid-19 hospital admissions similar to Liverpool) for the initial period of intensive testing with military assistance in national lockdown from 6 November to 3 December 2020. A 25% (11% to 35%) reduction (239 (104 to 333) in total) was estimated across the overall intervention period (6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021), involving fewer testing centres, before England's national roll-out of community testing, after adjusting for regional differences in tiers of covid-19 restrictions from 3 December 2020 to 2 January 2021. The city-wide pilot of community based asymptomatic testing for SARS-CoV-2 was associated with substantially reduced covid-19 related hospital admissions. Large scale asymptomatic rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 could help reduce transmission and prevent hospital admissions.
Medical subject headings
- COVID-19