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      Author’s Response to Peer Reviews of “Mass Testing With Contact Tracing Compared to Test and Trace for the Effective Suppression of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: Systematic Review”

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          Mass Testing With Contact Tracing Compared to Test and Trace for the Effective Suppression of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: Systematic Review

          Background Making testing available to everyone and tracing contacts might be the gold standard to control COVID-19. Many countries including the United Kingdom have relied on the symptom-based test and trace strategy in bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control. The effectiveness of a test and trace strategy based on symptoms has been questionable and has failed to meet testing and tracing needs. This is further exacerbated by it not being delivered at the point of care, leading to rising cases and deaths. Increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United Kingdom despite performing the highest number of tests in Europe suggest that symptom-based testing and contact tracing might not be effective as a control strategy. An alternative strategy is making testing available to all. Objective The primary objective of this review was to compare mass testing and contact tracing with the conventional test and trace method in the suppression of SARS-CoV-2 infections. The secondary objective was to determine the proportion of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases reported during mass testing interventions. Methods Literature in English was searched from September through December 2020 in Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Mendeley, and PubMed. Search terms included “mass testing,” “test and trace,” “contact tracing,” “COVID-19,” “SARS-CoV-2,” “effectiveness,” “asymptomatic,” “symptomatic,” “community screening,” “UK,” and “2020.” Search results were synthesized without meta-analysis using the direction of effect as the standardized metric and vote counting as the synthesis metric. A statistical synthesis was performed using Stata 14.2. Tabular and graphical methods were used to present findings. Results The literature search yielded 286 articles from Google Scholar, 20 from ScienceDirect, 14 from Mendeley, 27 from PubMed, and 15 through manual search. A total of 35 articles were included in the review, with a sample size of nearly 1 million participants. We found a 76.9% (10/13, 95% CI 46.2%-95.0%; P=.09) majority vote in favor of the intervention under the primary objective. The overall proportion of asymptomatic cases among those who tested positive and in the tested sample populations under the secondary objective was 40.7% (1084/2661, 95% CI 38.9%-42.6%) and 0.0% (1084/9,942,878, 95% CI 0.0%-0.0%), respectively. Conclusions There was low-level but promising evidence that mass testing and contact tracing could be more effective in bringing the virus under control and even more effective if combined with social distancing and face coverings. The conventional test and trace method should be superseded by decentralized and regular mass rapid testing and contact tracing, championed by general practitioner surgeries and low-cost community services.
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            Peer Review of “Mass Testing With Contact Tracing Compared to Test and Trace for the Effective Suppression of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: Systematic Review”

              Author and article information

              Contributors
              Journal
              JMIRx Med
              JMIRx Med
              JMed
              JMIRx Med
              JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )
              2563-6316
              Apr-Jun 2021
              12 April 2021
              12 April 2021
              : 2
              : 2
              : e28744
              Affiliations
              [1 ] London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine London United Kingdom
              Author notes
              Corresponding Author: Mathew Mbwogge mathew.ngime@ 123456alumni.lshtm.ac.uk
              Author information
              https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0594-1937
              Article
              v2i2e28744
              10.2196/28744
              10414480
              72225d0a-7d53-4dcb-be8c-fad3fb4cf7b0
              ©Mathew Mbwogge. Originally published in JMIRx Med (https://med.jmirx.org), 12.04.2021.

              This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the JMIRx Med, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://med.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

              History
              : 12 March 2021
              : 12 March 2021
              Categories
              Authors’ Response to Peer Reviews
              Authors’ Response to Peer Reviews

              covid-19,sars-cov-2,test and trace,universal testing,mass testing,contact tracing,infection surveillance,prevention and control,review

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