Comparison of a Commercial SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Test with Real-Time PCR.

Objective: The study compared the mö-screen Corona Antigen Test (Qiagen, Germany) with RT-PCR in suspected COVID-19 patients.

Materials And Methods: Two hundred combined oro-nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from patients with suspected COVID-19 to evaluate the analytical performance of the mö-screen Corona Antigen Test compared to qualitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in symptomatic patients.

Results: The mö-screen Corona Antigen Test showed an overall agreement with a sensitivity of 100%, a specificity of 100%, a positive predictive value (PPV) of 100%, and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 100%. We semi-quantitatively evaluated the mö-screen Corona Antigen Test and found a -0.706 correlation between cycle threshold (Ct) values and antigen test results (<0.001).

Conclusion: The accuracy achievable by the mö-screen Corona Antigen Test, combined with the rapid turnaround time compared to RT-PCR, suggests that rapid antigen tests can be used for rapid diagnosis.