• Rahel N Stadler, Laura Maurer, Lisandra Aguilar-Bultet, Fabian Franzeck, Chantal Ruchti, Richard Kühl, Andreas F Widmer, Ruth Schindler, Roland Bingisser, Katharina M Rentsch, Hans Pargger, Raoul Sutter, Luzius Steiner, Christoph Meier, Werner Kübler, Hans H Hirsch, Adrian Egli, Manuel Battegay, Stefano Bassetti, and Sarah Tschudin-Sutter.
• Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Petersgraben 4, 4031, Basel, Switzerland.
• Antimicrob Resist Infect Control. 2021 Feb 27; 10 (1): 44.

AbstractThe proportion of asymptomatic carriers of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains elusive and the potential benefit of systematic screening during the SARS-CoV-2-pandemic is controversial. We investigated the proportion of asymptomatic inpatients who were identified by systematic screening for SARS-CoV-2 upon hospital admission. Our analysis revealed that systematic screening of asymptomatic inpatients detects a low total number of SARS-CoV-2 infections (0.1%), questioning the cost-benefit ratio of this intervention. Even when the population-wide prevalence was low, the proportion of asymptomatic carriers remained stable, supporting the need for universal infection prevention and control strategies to avoid onward transmission by undetected SARS-CoV-2-carriers during the pandemic.

24 keywords...

hide…