Utilisation of SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen assays in screening asymptomatic hospital visitors: mitigating the risk in low-incidence settings

Abstract

Retrospective contact tracing, enabled by the use of automated visitor-management systems and digital contact tracing, together with rapid antigen detection (RAD) for SARS-CoV-2 among visitors staying ≥ 30 minutes, identified COVID-19 cases in < 0.01% (6/72 605) of hospital visitors to a large hospital campus over an 8-week study period. The potential for nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from hospital visitors was thus very low, and could be further mitigated by universal mask-wearing among staff and visitors.

Keywords

• SARS-CoV-2
• COVID-19
• antigen test
• point-of-care testing
• outbreak
• visitors