Unreported SARS-CoV-2 Home Testing and Test Positivity - JAMA

[Mary Wilson]

January 25, 2023

doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.52684

Soo Park, BA¹; Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS²; Jeffrey E. Olgin, MD²; et al

Introduction
Timely SARS-CoV-2 testing is critical to reducing transmission. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 test sites have been required to report SARS-CoV-2 test results to local or state public health departments,¹ and these data are used for detecting new surges of transmission. With increasing availability of home antigen tests, however, it is unclear how to interpret time trends in officially reported case counts and test positivity.

Methods
The COVID-19 Citizen Science Study was approved by the institutional review board at the University of California, San Francisco, and was launched in March 2020 to gather patient-reported data about the COVID-19 pandemic.² This cohort study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline for cohort studies. Participants were invited by word of mouth or social media or from our recruitment partners via email, telephone, or patient portal message and then provided informed consent and baseline demographic information. Race and ethnicity were self-reported by the participants and were analyzed in this study to understand differences in unreported test frequency and test positivity. Each week, we asked participants about recent COVID-19 testing and test results. ...

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