AUTHOR=Villarreal Alcibiades , Rangel Giselle , Zhang Xu , Wong Digna , Britton Gabrielle , Fernandez Patricia L. , Pérez Ambar , Oviedo Diana , Restrepo Carlos , Carreirra María B. , Sambrano Dilcia , Eskildsen Gilberto A. , De La Guardia Carolina , Flores-Cuadra Julio , Carrera Jean-Paul , Zaldivar Yamitzel , Franco Danilo , López-Vergès Sandra , Zhang Dexi , Fan Fangjing , Wang Baojun , Sáez-Llorens Xavier , DeAntonio Rodrigo , Torres-Atencio Ivonne , Blanco Isabel , Subía Fernando Diaz , Mudarra Laiss , Benzadon Aron , Valverde Walter , López Lineth , Hurtado Nicolás , Rivas Neyla , Jurado Julio , Carvallo Aixa , Rodriguez Juan , Perez Yaseikiry , Morris Johanna , Luque Odemaris , Cortez David , Ortega-Barria Eduardo , Kosagisharaf Rao , Lleonart Ricardo , Li Chong , Goodridge Amador TITLE=Performance of a Point of Care Test for Detecting IgM and IgG Antibodies Against SARS-CoV-2 and Seroprevalence in Blood Donors and Health Care Workers in Panama JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine VOLUME=8 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.616106 DOI=10.3389/fmed.2021.616106 ISSN=2296-858X ABSTRACT=

Novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the etiologic agent of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has reached 28 million cases worldwide in 1 year. The serological detection of antibodies against the virus will play a pivotal role in complementing molecular tests to improve diagnostic accuracy, contact tracing, vaccine efficacy testing, and seroprevalence surveillance. Here, we aimed first to evaluate a lateral flow assay's ability to identify specific IgM and IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and second, to report the seroprevalence estimates of these antibodies among health care workers and healthy volunteer blood donors in Panama. We recruited study participants between April 30th and July 7th, 2020. For the test validation and performance evaluation, we analyzed serum samples from participants with clinical symptoms and confirmed positive RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2, and a set of pre-pandemic serum samples. We used two by two table analysis to determine the test positive and negative percentage agreement as well as the Kappa agreement value with a 95% confidence interval. Then, we used the lateral flow assay to determine seroprevalence among serum samples from COVID-19 patients, potentially exposed health care workers, and healthy volunteer donors. Our results show this assay reached a positive percent agreement of 97.2% (95% CI 84.2–100.0%) for detecting both IgM and IgG. The assay showed a Kappa of 0.898 (95%CI 0.811–0.985) and 0.918 (95% CI 0.839–0.997) for IgM and IgG, respectively. The evaluation of serum samples from hospitalized COVID-19 patients indicates a correlation between test sensitivity and the number of days since symptom onset; the highest positive percent agreement [87% (95% CI 67.0–96.3%)] was observed at ≥15 days post-symptom onset (PSO). We found an overall antibody seroprevalence of 11.6% (95% CI 8.5–15.8%) among both health care workers and healthy blood donors. Our findings suggest this lateral flow assay could contribute significantly to implementing seroprevalence testing in locations with active community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.