Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-24-2020
Abstract
Because people with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections are an important source of transmission, widespread testing has the potential to identify and isolate such individuals, quarantine their contacts, and prevent further spread. However, testing for a condition in a group with low disease prevalence may lead to numerous false positive results. This study quantifies the tradeoff between reducing transmission by true positives and unnecessary isolation and quarantine due to false positives.
Keywords
COVID-19 (disease), communicable diseases, coronavirus infections
Publication Title
Journal of General Internal Medicine
Rights
© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Sehgal, A.R. Should Asymptomatic and Low-Risk Individuals be Tested for SARS-CoV-2?. J GEN INTERN MED 35, 2810–2812 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-06000-z