A prospective study of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection among individuals involved in academic research under limited operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prospective study of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection among individuals involved in academic research under limited operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blog Article

BackgroundEarly in the pandemic, transmission risk from asymptomatic infection was unclear, making it imperative to monitor infection in workplace settings.Further, data on SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence within university populations has been limited.MethodsWe performed a longitudinal study of University research employees on campus July-December 2020.We conducted questionnaires on COVID-19 risk factors, RT-PCR testing, and SARS-CoV-2 serology using an in-house spike RBD assay, laboratory-based Spike NTD assay, and standard nucleocapsid platform assay.We estimated prevalence and cumulative incidence of seroconversion with 95% confidence intervals using the inverse of the Kaplan-Meier trufit wrist brace estimator.

Results910 individuals were included in this analysis.At baseline, 6.2% (95% CI 4.29-8.19) were seropositive using the spike RBD assay; four (0.

4%) were seropositive using the nucleocapsid assay, and donitsirauta 44 (4.8%) using the Spike NTD assay.Cumulative incidence was 3.61% (95% CI: 2.04-5.

16).Six asymptomatic individuals had positive RT-PCR results.ConclusionsPrevalence and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections were low; however, differences in target antigens of serological tests provided different estimates.Future research on appropriate methods of serological testing in unvaccinated and vaccinated populations is needed.Frequent RT-PCR testing of asymptomatic individuals is required to detect acute infections, and repeated serosurveys are beneficial for monitoring subclinical infection.