Evaluation of Home Use COVID-19 Frequent Antigen Testing and Data Reporting

The current standard of care for diagnostic of SARS-CoV-2 infection involves sample collection which is then prepared and measured via real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). This process is time consuming and dependent on expensive instrumentation and trained technicians to perform both the sample preparation and assay. In many cases, sample turn-around times can take hours to several days. There are no established monitoring nationwide protocols for COVID-19 prevention of infection. Due to the lack of such protocols, this study will provide the proper experience to design a safe monitoring schema of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19. Self-testing using currently available RDT has a high specificity and relatively high sensitivity to identify individuals with a high probability of contagiousness. Therefore, we intend to use these RDT (Rapid diagnostic tests) for other use. There are several studies that point to the importance of the use of RDTs to monitor COVID-19 (3). The recent metadata indicate that the performance of the antigen test is crucial for obtaining good results to detect positive cases. We have already validated in the laboratory and using relevant clinical samples several different labels of antigen tests and we have compared them with already approved USA FDA antigen tests to confirm their performance prior to using them in this study. This project aims to monitor once a week the presence of SARS CoV-2 antigens using anterior nares (AN) swab self-process, executing the test and recording of the result, immediately after. The lack of affordable diagnostic tests which can detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the general population which can give near real-time results is one critical missing control intervention in USA for the control of the pandemic and the spread of this disease. As public health restrictions begin to ease and people return to normal activities, while the COVID-19 pandemic is still a threat, a rapid diagnostic assay that doe