HUGE Systematic review and meta-analysis of point-of-care serological tests for COVID-19 antibodies "Currently, available evidence does not support the continued use of existing point-of-care serological tests"pic.twitter.com/TKg4SdK0u6
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This is really bad for serological surveys (many of which have used these point-of-care tests) Raises the question about infection-fatality estimates, particularly those based on populations with low rates of infection
The problem for many serosurveys is that they used ELISA tests for IgG. According to this study, the pooled estimate for specificity of these tests is 98.9% and sensitivity of 80.6%
Now in a population with a 10% prevalence, that's pretty bad. In 1000 people, you miss 20 true positives and get 10 false positives, so you underestimate prevalence substantially
Conversely, if you have 1% prevalence, you miss 2 true positives but get 11 false ones, so you overestimate the prevalence of COVID infections enormously This is a big problem!
Now, some serosurveys have corrected for issues like this, but these new results suggest that commercial tests are less reliable and that their figures are more likely to be wrong That's a worry
Also, apologies, the initial tweet was incorrect - this SR/MA was for ALL serology tests for COVID-19 not just POC ones
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