SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing rates determine the sensitivity of genomic surveillance programs

• DOI: 10.1038/s41588-022-01267-w
• Publication Date: 2023-01-09T17:02:57Z
• Authors: Alvin X. Han; Amy Toporowski; Jilian A. Sacks; Mark D. Perkins; Sylvie Briand; Maria van Kerkhove; Emma Hannay; Sergio Carmona; Bill Rodriguez; Edyth Parker; Brooke E. Nichols; Colin A. Russell
• Keywords: Pandemic

The first step in SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance is testing to identify people who are infected. However, global rates falling as we emerge from the acute health emergency and remain low many low- middle-income countries (mean = 27 tests per 100,000 day). We simulated COVID-19 epidemics a prototypical country investigate how rates, sampling strategies sequencing proportions jointly impact outcomes, showed that spatiotemporal biases delay time detection of new variants by weeks months can lead unreliable estimates variant prevalence, even when proportion samples sequenced increased. Accordingly, investments wider access diagnostics support approximately 100 day could enable more timely reliable prevalence. performance programs fundamentally limited diagnostic testing.