Estimating point prevalence of COVID-19 in Qatar’s primary care registered population: an RT-PCR drive-through study protocol

Abstract

BackgroundThe first COVID-19 cases in Qatar were reported on 29th of February 2020. As the epidemic progresses, essential epidemiological information is needed to facilitate monitoring of COVID-19 in the population and plan pandemic response in Qatar.AimThe primary aim of this cross-sectional study is to estimate the point prevalence of COVID-19 in Qatar’s primary care registered population.Design and SettingsA cross sectional study design will be utilized. One publicly funded health centre from each of three geographical regions in Qatar will be identified as a study location and set up to facilitate a drive through for the study.MethodPHCC is publicly funded and the largest primary care provider in Qatar. The study will include randomly selected individuals from the full list of Primary Health Care Corporation’s (PHCC)registered population on its electronic medical records system. The sample selection will be done using a proportional to size sampling technique stratified by age, gender and nationality representative of the overall PHCC registered population. Considering the total population registered in PHCC a sample of 2080 is proposed. A questionnaire will be administered to collect sociodemographic information and a nasal and throat swab sample will be taken. Data will be analysed to report overall symptomatic and asymptomatic point prevalence of COVID-19.ConclusionThis study, with the help of a randomly selected representative sample from Qatar’s primary care registered population, will provide results which can be applied to the entire population. This study design will closely represent a real-world scenario of the outbreak and is likely to provide important data to guide COVID-19 pandemic planning and response in Qatar.

The COVID-19 drive-through point — screening and testing — first in Poland complex centre experience

“…This PUMS POST model can be implemented anywhere in the country in any comparable area size. Event centres proved to be particularly useful due to their stable environmental conditions and they were largely unoccupied during the pandemic [23][24][25][26][27]. Moreover, the PUMS POST was fully adaptable to the changing pandemic conditions.…”

“…Moreover, the PUMS POST was fully adaptable to the changing pandemic conditions. Identifying patients at high risk of infection via a telephone segregation line allowed for remote evaluation of the patients and enabled to divide them into groups, those that would benefit the POST system and those with serious symptoms that required a personal visit to the physician [6,11,12,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28]. Access to COVID-19 testing for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations was additionally beneficial [24,25,28].…”

COVID-19 Surveillance in the Primary Health Care Population of Qatar: Experience of Prioritizing Timeliness Over Representativeness When Sampling the Population

“…The final strata sample size will be 195 and the resulting total sample size will be 3,120.This sampling approach was used to ensure adequate representation for all population strata, while obtaining a representative summary measure for the reference population through proper weighting at the analysis stage. The details of the survey protocol are published elsewhere (15).…”

“…A survey was designed to estimate prevalence in Qatar's primary care registered population (15).The aim of this paper is to present the lessons learned from using two different sampling methodologies applied when executing the survey. In addition, it provides a snapshot of the COVID-19 outbreak in Qatar's primary care registered population after 3 months from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”