Effectiveness of mass testing for control of COVID-19: a systematic review protocol

Abstract

IntroductionSince March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak has been deemed a pandemic by the WHO, the SARS-CoV-2 spreading has been the focus of attention of scientists, authorities, public health agencies and communities around the world. One of the great concerns and challenges, mainly in low-income and middle-income countries, is the identification and monitoring of COVID-19 cases. The large-scale availability of testing is a fundamental aspect of COVID-19 control, but it is currently the biggest challenge faced by many countries around the world. We aimed to synthesise and critically evaluate the scientific evidence on the influence of the testing capacity for symptomatic individuals in the control of COVID-19.Methods and analysisA systematic review will be conducted in eight databases, such as Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, ISI-of-Knowledge, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, SCOPUS, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature, PsycINFO and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, from inception to 30 July 2020. No restriction regarding the language, publication date or setting will be employed. Primary outcomes will include the sensitivity as well as the specificity of the tests for COVID-19. Study selection will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist. Methodological assessment of the studies will be evaluated by the Cochrane Risk-of-Bias tool for randomised controlled trials, the MINORS for non-randomised studies and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for cohort or case–control studies. Findings will be structured according to the test type and target population characteristics and focused on the primary outcomes (sensitivity and specificity). Moreover, if sufficient data are available, a meta-analysis will be performed. Pooled standardised mean differences and 95% CIs will be calculated. Heterogeneity between the studies will be determined by I2 statistics. Subgroup analyses will also be conducted. Publication bias will be assessed with funnel plots and Egger’s test. Heterogeneity will be explored by random effects analysis.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval is not required. The results will be disseminated widely via peer-reviewed publication and presentations at conferences related to this field.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42020182724.

Effectiveness of hospital clowns for symptom management in paediatrics: systematic review of randomised and non-randomised controlled trials

“…Initially, the existence of controlled descriptors (such as MeSH terms, CINAHL headings, PsycINFO thesaurus, and DeCS-Health Science Descriptors) and their synonyms (keywords) was verified in each database. We combined the search terms using the Boolean operators “AND” and “OR.” 37 38 39 Subsequently, we used a search strategy combining MeSH terms and free text words (eg, “(child OR child, hospitalized OR adolescent OR adolescent, hospitalized OR paediatrics) AND (clown doctors OR clown intervention OR clowns OR therapeutic clown OR clowns in hospital OR hospital clowns) AND (symptoms OR affective symptoms OR behavioural symptoms OR symptom clusters OR clusters of neuropsychological symptoms OR neuropsychological symptoms OR anxiety OR stress, psychological OR distress OR psychological impact)”).…”

State-level variation of initial COVID-19 dynamics in the United States

“…Recently, Gelfand et al [22], found that countries with both efficient governments and high tightness scores were more effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19 and reducing mortality rates. In this paper, we focus on the early dynamics of the pandemic, where inadequate and heterogeneous testing capacities are as, if not more, important in driving epidemic dynamics than geospatial differences [23]. This allows us to test for a wide-range of potential correlates-testing, intervention, population density, behavior, etc.-all potentially driving early reported data.…”

Role of efficient testing and contact tracing in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic: a network modelling study

“…[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Few studies have quantified how the efficiency of testing and contact tracing limits disease spread. Lopes-Júnior et al 23 published a protocol to evaluate the influence of testing capacity for symptomatic individuals on the control of COVID-19. We referred to this protocol and searched PubMed and Google Scholar in our literature review for studies evaluating the effect of testing and contact tracing through March 2021.…”