Prospective Observational COVID-19 Screening and Monitoring of Asymptomatic Cancer Center Health-Care Workers with a Rapid Serological Test.

Health-care workers (HCW) are at high risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and, if asymptomatic, for transmitting the virus to fragile cancer patients. We monitored all asymptomatic HCWs of a cancer institute (94% of all employees agreed to enter the study) with the rapid serological test, VivaDiag^TM, identifying SARS-CoV-2 associated-IgM/IgG. The tests were performed at time 0 (n = 606) and after 14 days (n = 393). Overall, the VivaDiag^TM results of nine HCWs (1.5%) were positive, with one confirmed to be SARS-CoV-2-positive after oropharyngeal swab testing by RT-PCR. At time 0, all nine cases showed IgM expression while IgG was detected in only one. After 14 days, IgM persisted in all the cases, while IgG became evident in four. A chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA) confirmed IgM positivity in 5/13 VivaDiag^TM positive cases and IgG positivity in 4/5 VivaDiag^TM positive cases. Our study suggests that the VivaDiag^TM test can be of help in identifying SARS-CoV-2 infected people in cohorts of subjects with a high prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]