Occurrence and Timing of Subsequent Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Reverse-transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction Positivity Among Initially Negative Patients

Dustin R Long; Saurabh Gombar; Catherine A Hogan; Alexander L Greninger; Vikas O'Reilly-Shah; Chloe Bryson-Cahn; Bryan Stevens; Arjun Rustagi; Keith R Jerome; Christina S Kong; James Zehnder; Nigam H Shah; Noel S Weiss; Benjamin A Pinsky; Jacob E Sunshine

doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa722

Occurrence and Timing of Subsequent Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Reverse-transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction Positivity Among Initially Negative Patients

Clin Infect Dis. 2021 Jan 27;72(2):323-326. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa722.

Authors

Dustin R Long¹, Saurabh Gombar², Catherine A Hogan^{2

3}, Alexander L Greninger^{4

5}, Vikas O'Reilly-Shah⁶, Chloe Bryson-Cahn⁷, Bryan Stevens^{2

3}, Arjun Rustagi⁸, Keith R Jerome^{4

5}, Christina S Kong², James Zehnder², Nigam H Shah⁹, Noel S Weiss¹⁰, Benjamin A Pinsky^{2

3

8}, Jacob E Sunshine⁶

Affiliations

¹ Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA.
² Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
³ Clinical Virology Laboratory, Stanford Health Care, Stanford, California, USA.
⁴ Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA.
⁵ Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, USA.
⁶ Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA.
⁷ Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA.
⁸ Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
⁹ Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Abstract

Using data for 20 912 patients from 2 large academic health systems, we analyzed the frequency of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction test discordance among individuals initially testing negative by nasopharyngeal swab who were retested on clinical grounds within 7 days. The frequency of subsequent positivity within this window was 3.5% and was similar across institutions.

Keywords: COVID-19; RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2; nasopharyngeal; test characteristics.

Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2020.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

COVID-19 Testing
COVID-19*
Humans
Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
SARS-CoV-2*

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding