Comparison of a commercial sars-cov-2 rapid antigen test with real-time pcr

Abstract

Objective: This study compared the m & ouml;-screen Corona Antigen Test (Qiagen, Germany) with RT-PCR in suspected COVID-19 patients. Materials and Methods: Two hundred combined oro-nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from patients with suspected COVID-19 to evaluate the analytical performance of the m & ouml;screen Corona Antigen Test compared to qualitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in symptomatic patients. Results: The m & ouml;-screen Corona Antigen Test showed an overall agreement with a sensitivity of 100%, a specificity of 100%, a positive predictive value (PPV) of 100%, and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 100%. We semi-quantitatively evaluated the m & ouml;-screen Corona Antigen Test and found a-0.706 correlation between cycle threshold (Ct) values and antigen test results (p<0.001). Conclusion: The accuracy achievable by the m & ouml;-screen Corona Antigen Test, combined with the rapid turnaround time compared to RT-PCR, suggests that rapid antigen tests can be used for rapid diagnosis.