Diagnostic tests for COVID-19 (research up to 9 April 2020)
Citation: Shirvani A, Azimi L, Ghanaie RM, et al. Utility of Available Methods for Diagnosing SARS-CoV-2 in Clinical Samples. Archives of Pediatric Infectious Diseases 2020;8(3):e103677.
What is this? A variety of diagnostic tests are being used to identify patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
In this rapid review, the authors searched for studies of the clinical diagnosis of COVID-19. They restricted their searches to articles published in English up to 9 April 2020. They included 54 articles, reporting 46 studies.
What was found: At the time of this review, the included studies showed that although RT-PCR tests are reliable, they cannot act as a gold standard test alone because of measurement biases.
At the time of this review, the included studies showed that alternative diagnostic tests such as antibody tests may be used to supplement RT-PCR testing.
At the time of this review, the included studies showed that serological tests are not as reliable as RT-PCR tests.