EVALUATION OF THE PANBIO SARS-COV-2 RAPID ANTIGEN DETECTION TEST IN THE BAHAMAS

Identification and isolation of persons infected with SARS-COV-2 are key mitigation strategies in the current pandemic, and rapid antigen detection tests (RADTs) offer the promise of decreased turnaround time to diagnosis when compared with gold standard RT-PCR testing. We evaluated the analytical performance of the Abbott® Panbio™ RADT on nasopharyngeal samples stored at the Ministry of Health National Reference Lab in Nassau, Bahamas. The Panbio™ demonstrated a test sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 100% on 50 PCR negative samples and 50 samples presumed to be infectious based on having PCR cycle threshold values below 30. Additionally, in our examination of operator results there was low interpersonal variation (1%) among three blind operators and significant correlation between sample Ct value and perceived signal strength on the RADT device. However, three PCR positive samples below Ct 30 were misdiagnosed by RADT, including one sample with Ct value less than 20. These results support the use of the Panbio™ in symptomatic persons to detect active SARS-COV-2 infections, with the caveat that RADT-negative samples should be confirmed by RT-PCR.