Frontiers in Public Health (Jun 2020)

Identification of RT-PCR-Negative Asymptomatic COVID-19 Patients via Serological Testing

  • Jinru Wu,
  • Jinru Wu,
  • Xinyi Liu,
  • Dan Zhou,
  • Guangqian Qiu,
  • Miao Dai,
  • Qingting Yang,
  • Zhonghui Pan,
  • Ning Zhou,
  • Pa Wu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00267
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8

Abstract

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Asymptomatic individuals with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been identified via nucleic acid testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); however, the epidemiologic characteristics and viral shedding pattern of asymptomatic patients remain largely unknown. In this study, serological testing was applied when identifying nine asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 who showed persistent negative RT-PCR test results for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid and no symptoms of COVID-19. Two asymptomatic cases were presumed to be index patients who had cleared the virus when their close contacts developed symptoms of COVID-19. Three of the asymptomatic cases were local individuals who spontaneously recovered before their presumed index patients developed symptoms of COVID-19. This report presents the epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of asymptomatic individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection that were undetected on RT-PCR tests in previous epidemiologic investigations probably due to the transient viral shedding duration.

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