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Response to Letter to Editor by Zavascki A.P.: Urgent need for evaluating point-of-care tests as a RT-PCR-sparing strategy for the diagnosis of Covid-19 in symptomatic patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2021

W.K. Chow Open the ORCID record for W.K. Chow [Opens in a new window]  and
C.L. Chow
W.K. Chow*
Affiliation:
Department of Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
C.L. Chow
Affiliation:
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
*
Author for correspondence: W.K. Chow, E-mail: elize.yeung.polyu@gmail.com
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Letter to the Editor
Information
Epidemiology & Infection , Volume 149 , 2021 , e33
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

We agree entirely that the proposed pool testing mathematical strategy [Reference Chow and Chow1] is needed [Reference Zavascki2] in low-income countries, assisting the government in operating the public health system. The resources bottleneck can be solved via applying optimised testing policies in low-resource setting.

Further, if the mathematical strategy is well supported by disaster management personnel, quick, reliable and cheap detection testing schemes on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with smaller number of tests can be worked out.

Another update on recent mandatory testing [Reference Cheung, Cheung and Lam3] in several suburbs with confirmed infection cases, the pooling testing strategy will be useful in handling thousands of tests quickly for picking up asymptomatic patients at a certain time. Although residents having negative results are not yet safe, and they are asked to do the test again a few days later.

References

Chow, WK and Chow, CL (2021) A discussion on implementing pooling detection tests of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) for a large population. Epidemiology and Infection, 149, e17. doi: 10.1017/S0950268820003155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zavascki, AP (2021) Urgent need for evaluating point-of-care tests as a RT-PCR-sparing strategy for the diagnosis of Covid-19 in symptomatic patients. Epidemiology and Infection, 1–4. doi: 10.1017/S0950268821000170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheung, E, Cheung, T and Lam, J (2021) Hong Kong fourth wave: mandatory testing of residents in about 70 more buildings, as 56 new coronavirus cases logged. South China Morning Post, 19 January 2021. Available at https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3118267/hong-kong-fourth-wave-carrie-lam-pledges-stepped.Google Scholar