Why LESS Sensitive Tests Might Be Better

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Thanks to Brilliant for sponsoring this video - the first 200 people to click on https://www.brilliant.org/MinutePhysics will get 20% off a Premium subscription to Brilliant. This video written & produced in collaboration with Aatish Bhatia, https://www.aatishb.com This video is about how cheap, fast, and LESS sensitive rapid antigen tests might be better for screening (& maybe surveillance) than PCR COVID tests due to the nature of contagiousness/infectiveness at various points on the viral load trajectory of symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID sars-COV-2 carriers. REFERENCES Thanks to Daniel Larremore for feedback on early versions of this video https://larremorelab.github.io/ Rapid Antigen Testing: COVID-19 testing: One size does not fit all. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6525/126 Rethinking Covid-19 Test Sensitivity — A Strategy for Containment. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2025631 Test sensitivity is secondary to frequency and turnaround time for COVID-19 screening. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/1/eabd5393.abstract The effectiveness of population-wide, rapid antigen test based screening in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence in Slovakia. (pre-print, not yet peer reviewed) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.02.20240648v1 Effective Testing and Screening for Covid-19. https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/A-National-Decision-Point-Effective-Testing-Screening-for-Covid-19-Full-Report.pdf Brown University & Harvard University modeling of COVID-19 testing shortfall. https://globalepidemics.org/testing-targets/ Fast Coronavirus Tests are coming. https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-020-02661-2/d41586-020-02661-2.pdf Open letter signed by epidemiologists and infectious disease experts supporting widespread & frequent rapid antigen testing for COVID-19: https://www.rapidtests.org/expert-letter More information on various COVID-19 tests: https://chs.asu.edu/diagnostics-commons/testing-commons Field performance and public health response using the BinaxNOW Rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen detection assay during community-based testing. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1890/6052342 Performance of an Antigen-Based Test for Asymptomatic and Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Testing at Two University Campuses. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm695152a3.htm Asymptomatic Spread: People without symptoms spread virus in more than half of cases, CDC model finds https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2021/01/07/covid-asymptomatic-spread/ (More than half of all) SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707 Three Quarters of People with SARS-CoV-2 Infection are Asymptomatic: Analysis of English Household Survey Data. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7549754/ Viral Load Curve: SARS-CoV-2 viral dynamics in acute infections. (pre-print, not yet peer reviewed) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.21.20217042v2 Support MinutePhysics on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/minutephysics Link to Patreon Supporters: http://www.minutephysics.com/supporters/ MinutePhysics is on twitter - @minutephysics And facebook - http://facebook.com/minutephysics Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute! Created by Henry Reich