Would Nationwide Weekly Home SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Testing Be Worth the Effort and Expense?

A modeling study indicates that, even with limited uptake, weekly home antigen tests would be cost-effective.

Home antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2 have been cleared by the FDA, but periodic screening has largely been limited to defined groups such as elite athletes. Now, investigators modelled the cost-effectiveness of universal weekly home SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests, with positive results confirmed through mail-in PCR-based tests. The base-case model makes the following assumptions:

Effective reproduction number: 1.3
Rate of asymptomatic infection: 40%
Sensitivity to detect contagious cases: 80%
Participation in testing: 50%
Isolation after positive test: 50%, with 20% daily dropout rates over 10 days

Based on these assumptions, the number of new infections and deaths over a 60-day period would be reduced by 2.8 million and 15,700 respectively. The cost of p…

Reviewing Author

Daniel Kaul, MD

Disclosures

Grant/Research SupportNobelpharma; Pfizer

Leadership Positions in Professional SocietiesAmerican Society of Transplantation (Program Committee)

Daniel Kaul, MD

Disclosures

Grant/Research SupportNobelpharma; Pfizer

Leadership Positions in Professional SocietiesAmerican Society of Transplantation (Program Committee)

Would Nationwide Weekly Home SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Testing Be Worth the Effort and Expense?

Topics

Reviewing Author