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Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases
Epidemic control may be hampered when the percentage of asymptomatic cases is high. Seeking remedies for this problem, test positivity was explored between the first 60 to 90 epidemic days in six countries that reported their first COVID-19 case between February and March 2020: Argentina, Bolivia, C...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8144156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34048912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2021.05.017 |
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author | Fasina, Folorunso O. Salami, Mudasiru A. Fasina, Modupe M. Otekunrin, Olutosin A. Hoogesteijn, Almira L Hittner, James B. |
author_facet | Fasina, Folorunso O. Salami, Mudasiru A. Fasina, Modupe M. Otekunrin, Olutosin A. Hoogesteijn, Almira L Hittner, James B. |
author_sort | Fasina, Folorunso O. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Epidemic control may be hampered when the percentage of asymptomatic cases is high. Seeking remedies for this problem, test positivity was explored between the first 60 to 90 epidemic days in six countries that reported their first COVID-19 case between February and March 2020: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Uruguay. Test positivity (TP) is the percentage of test-positive individuals reported on a given day out of all individuals tested the same day. To generate both country-specific and multi-country information, this study was implemented in two stages. First, the epidemiologic data of the country infected last (Uruguay) were analyzed. If at least one TP-related analysis yielded a statistically significant relationship, later assessments would investigate the six countries. The Uruguayan data indicated (i) a positive correlation between daily TP and daily new cases (r = 0.75); (ii) a negative correlation between TP and the number of tests conducted per million inhabitants (TPMI, r = −0.66); and (iii) three temporal stages, which differed from one another in both TP and TPMI medians (p < 0.01) and, together, revealed a negative relationship between TPMI and TP. No significant relationship was found between TP and the number of active or recovered patients. The six countries showed a positive correlation between TP and the number of deaths/million inhabitants (DMI, r = 0.65, p < 0.01). With one exception –a country where isolation was not pursued−, all countries showed a negative correlation between TP and TPMI (r = 0.74). The temporal analysis of country-specific policies revealed four patterns, characterized by: (1) low TPMI and high DMI, (2) high TPMI and low DMI; (3) an intermediate pattern, and (4) high TPMI and high DMI. Findings support the hypothesis that test positivity may guide epidemiologic policy-making, provided that policy-related factors are considered and high-resolution geographical data are utilized. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8144156 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81441562021-05-25 Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases Fasina, Folorunso O. Salami, Mudasiru A. Fasina, Modupe M. Otekunrin, Olutosin A. Hoogesteijn, Almira L Hittner, James B. Methods Article Epidemic control may be hampered when the percentage of asymptomatic cases is high. Seeking remedies for this problem, test positivity was explored between the first 60 to 90 epidemic days in six countries that reported their first COVID-19 case between February and March 2020: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Uruguay. Test positivity (TP) is the percentage of test-positive individuals reported on a given day out of all individuals tested the same day. To generate both country-specific and multi-country information, this study was implemented in two stages. First, the epidemiologic data of the country infected last (Uruguay) were analyzed. If at least one TP-related analysis yielded a statistically significant relationship, later assessments would investigate the six countries. The Uruguayan data indicated (i) a positive correlation between daily TP and daily new cases (r = 0.75); (ii) a negative correlation between TP and the number of tests conducted per million inhabitants (TPMI, r = −0.66); and (iii) three temporal stages, which differed from one another in both TP and TPMI medians (p < 0.01) and, together, revealed a negative relationship between TPMI and TP. No significant relationship was found between TP and the number of active or recovered patients. The six countries showed a positive correlation between TP and the number of deaths/million inhabitants (DMI, r = 0.65, p < 0.01). With one exception –a country where isolation was not pursued−, all countries showed a negative correlation between TP and TPMI (r = 0.74). The temporal analysis of country-specific policies revealed four patterns, characterized by: (1) low TPMI and high DMI, (2) high TPMI and low DMI; (3) an intermediate pattern, and (4) high TPMI and high DMI. Findings support the hypothesis that test positivity may guide epidemiologic policy-making, provided that policy-related factors are considered and high-resolution geographical data are utilized. Elsevier Inc. 2021-11 2021-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8144156/ /pubmed/34048912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2021.05.017 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Fasina, Folorunso O. Salami, Mudasiru A. Fasina, Modupe M. Otekunrin, Olutosin A. Hoogesteijn, Almira L Hittner, James B. Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title | Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title_full | Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title_fullStr | Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title_full_unstemmed | Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title_short | Test positivity – Evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
title_sort | test positivity – evaluation of a new metric to assess epidemic dispersal mediated by non-symptomatic cases |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8144156/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34048912 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2021.05.017 |
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