Abstract

The novel coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has severely impacted the training of health care professional students because of concerns of potential asymptomatic transmission to colleagues and vulnerable patients. From May 27th, 2020, to June 23rd 2021; at a time when B.1.1.7 (alpha) and B.1.617.2 (delta) were the dominant circulating variants, PCR testing was conducted on 1,237 nasopharyngeal swabs collected from 454 asymptomatic health care professional students as they returned to their studies from across Canada to Kingston, ON, a low prevalence area during that period for COVID-19. Despite 46.7% of COVID-19 infections occurring in the 18–29 age group in Kingston, severe-acute-respiratory coronavirus-2 was not detected in any of the samples suggesting that negligible asymptomatic infection occurred in this group and that PCR testing in this setting may not be warranted as a screening tool.

Details

Title
Asymptomatic surveillance testing for COVID-19 in health care professional students: lessons learned from a low prevalence setting
Author
Burrows, Alyssa G; Linton, Sophia; Thiele, Jenny; Sheth, Prameet M; Evans, Gerald A; Archer, Stephen; Doliszny, Katharine M; Finlayson, Marcia; Flynn, Leslie; Huang, Yun; Kasmani, Azim; Guan, T Hugh; Maier, Allison; Hansen-Taugher, Adrienne; Moore, Kieran; Sanfilippo, Anthony
Pages
1-6
Section
Short report
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
BioMed Central
ISSN
17101484
e-ISSN
17101492
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2803054031
Copyright
© 2023. This work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.