Detection of the Omicron Variant Virus With the Abbott BinaxNow SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Assay

James Regan; James P Flynn; Manish C Choudhary; Rockib Uddin; Jacob Lemieux; Julie Boucau; Roby P Bhattacharyya; Amy K Barczak; Jonathan Z Li; Mark J Siedner

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofac022

Detection of the Omicron Variant Virus With the Abbott BinaxNow SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Assay

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2022 Jan 28;9(3):ofac022. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofac022. eCollection 2022 Mar.

Authors

James Regan¹, James P Flynn¹, Manish C Choudhary^{1

2}, Rockib Uddin³, Jacob Lemieux^{2

3}, Julie Boucau⁴, Roby P Bhattacharyya^{2

3

5}, Amy K Barczak^{2

3

4}, Jonathan Z Li^{1

2}, Mark J Siedner^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
² Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
³ Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
⁴ Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
⁵ Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Abstract

We assessed the ability of the BinaxNow rapid test to detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 antigen from 4 individuals with Omicron and Delta infections. We performed serial dilutions of nasal swab samples, and specimens with concentrations of ≥100000 copies/swab were positive, demonstrating that the BinaxNow test is able to detect the Omicron variant.

Keywords: BinaxNow; SARS-CoV-2; diagnostic test; rapid antigen; viral load.