Papers

Peer-reviewed International journal
Aug 20, 2022

Designing isolation guidelines for COVID-19 patients with rapid antigen tests

Nature Communications
  • Yong Dam Jeong
  • Keisuke Ejima
  • Kwang Su Kim
  • Woo Joohyeon
  • Shoya Iwanami
  • Yasuhisa Fujita
  • Il Hyo Jung
  • Kazuyuki Aihara
  • Kenji Shibuya
  • Shingo Iwami
  • Ana I. Bento
  • Marco Ajelli
  • Display all

Volume
13
Number
1
First page
4910
Last page
4910
Language
English
Publishing type
Research paper (scientific journal)
DOI
10.1038/s41467-022-32663-9

Appropriate isolation guidelines for COVID-19 patients are warranted. Currently, isolating for fixed time is adopted in most countries. However, given the variability in viral dynamics between patients, some patients may no longer be infectious by the end of isolation, whereas others may still be infectious. Utilizing viral test results to determine isolation length would minimize both the risk of prematurely ending isolation of infectious patients and the unnecessary individual burden of redundant isolation of noninfectious patients. In this study, we develop a data-driven computational framework to compute the population-level risk and the burden of different isolation guidelines with rapid antigen tests (i.e., lateral flow tests). Here, we show that when the detection limit is higher than the infectiousness threshold values, additional consecutive negative results are needed to ascertain infectiousness status. Further, rapid antigen tests should be designed to have lower detection limits than infectiousness threshold values to minimize the length of prolonged isolation.

Link information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32663-9
PubMed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35987759
PubMed Central
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392070
ID information
  • DOI : 10.1038/s41467-022-32663-9
  • ORCID - Put Code : 117528550
  • Pubmed ID : 35987759
  • Pubmed Central ID : PMC9392070

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