Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov:2:100031.
doi: 10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100031. Epub 2020 Aug 3.

On the importance of early testing even when imperfect in a pandemic such as COVID-19

Neal D Goldstein  1 , Igor Burstyn  1   2
Affiliations

On the importance of early testing even when imperfect in a pandemic such as COVID-19

Neal D Goldstein et al. Glob Epidemiol. 2020 Nov.
No abstract available

Keywords: COVID-19; Diagnostics; Pandemic; SARS-CoV-2; Sensitivity; Specificity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author has no competing interests to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Expected variation in SARS-CoV-2 PCR-based test results as a function of true COVID-19 prevalence (Panel A: 0%–15% prevalence; Panel B: 0%–50% prevalence). Dark gray corresponds to false negative test results assuming sensitivity between 60 and 100%, light gray corresponds to false positive test results assuming specificity between 90 and 100%, and the line is the true count of cases. Results depict 1000 hypothetical PCR-based tests.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization Global surveillance for COVID-19 caused by human infection with COVID-19 virus. 2020. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331506/WHO-2019-nCoV-Su... Available at.
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Evaluating and testing persons for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/hcp/clinical-criteria.html Available at:
    1. Burstyn I., Goldstein N.D., Gustafson P. Towards reduction in bias in epidemic curves due to outcome misclassification through Bayesian analysis of time-series of laboratory test results: case study of COVID-19 in Alberta, Canada and Philadelphia. USA BMC Med Res Methodol. 2020;20:146. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burstyn I., Goldstein N.D., Gustafson P. It can be dangerous to take epidemic curves of COVID-19 at face value. Can J Public Health. 2020;23:1–4. doi: 10.17269/s41997-020-00367-6. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32578184; PMCID: PMC7309693. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Yap J.C., Ang I.Y.H., Tan S.H.X., Chen J.I., Lewis R.F., Yang Q. 2020-02-27. COVID-19 Science Report: Diagnostics. ScholarBank@NUS Repository. - DOI