Testing for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection in populations with low infection prevalence: the largely ignored problem of false positives and the value of repeat testing. medRxiv

Background: Calls are increasing for widespread SARS-CoV-2 infection testing of people from populations with a very low prevalence of infection. We quantified the impact of less than perfect diagnostic test accuracy on populations, and on individuals, in low prevalence settings, focusing on false positives and the role of confirmatory testing.