Clinical evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 antigen-based rapid diagnostic test kit for detection of COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh

The rapid and early detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections is key to control the current Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The present study was conducted to clinically evaluate a rapid diagnostic test (RDT) kit, Standard Q COVID-19 Ag Test (SD Biosensor®, Republic of Korea), with reference to the standard real-time RT-PCR for detection of COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh. Nasopharyngeal swabs were taken from 900 COVID-19 suspected patients. Among them, 34.11% (n = 307) were diagnosed as COVID-19 cases by RT-PCR assay, of which 85% (n = 261) were also detectable using the RDT. The overall sensitivity and specificity of the RDT compared to RT-PCR were 85.02% and 100%, respectively, regardless of age, sex, and type of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Most of the RT-PCR positive cases (94%) were found within the first five days of disease onset, and the sensitivity of RDT was 85.91% for the same samples. The positive predictive value (PPV) of the RDT was 100%, and the negative predictive value (NPV) was 92.8%. The Cohen's kappa value of 0.882 indicated excellent agreement between the RDT and RT-PCR assays. The findings of this study showed the potential use of SARS-CoV-2 antigen-based RDT to expedite the diagnostic process and onward COVID-19 management in Bangladesh.