Do we know the diagnostic properties of the tests used in COVID-19? A rapid review of recently published literature

Abstract

COVID-19 has brought death and disease to large parts of the world. Governments must deploy strategies to screen the population and subsequently isolate the suspect cases. Diagnostic testing is critical for epidemiological surveillance, but the accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) and clinical utility (impact on health outcomes) of the current diagnostic methods used for SARS-CoV-2 detection are not known. I ran a quick search in PubMed/MEDLINE to find studies on laboratory diagnostic tests and rapid viral diagnosis. After running the search sttategies, I found 47 eligible articles that I discuss in this review, commenting on test charactetistics and limitations. I did not find any papers that report on the clinical utility of the tests cunently used for COVID-19 detection, meaning that we are fighting a battle without ptoper knowledge of the proportion of false negatives that current testing is resulting in. This shortcoming should not be ovetlooked as it might hampet national efforts to contain the pandemic through testing community-based suspect cases.