FALSE-NEGATIVE RESULTS OF INITIAL RT-PCR ASSAYS FOR COVID-19: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Ingrid Arevalo-Rodriguez; Diana Buitrago-Garcia; Daniel Simancas-Racines; Paula Zambrano-Achig; Rosa del Campo; Agustin Ciapponi; Omar Sued; Laura Martinez-Garcia; Anne Rutjes; Nicola Low; Jose A Perez-Molina; Javier Zamora

Although we did not impose restrictions on population characteristics such as age, setting or 279 publication status, we noticed that our findings are limited due to all the studies were performed in 280 one country (China), and they reported data only for the beginning of the pandemic (January 2020), 281 in addition to the lack of reporting about the index test previously mentioned. RT-PCR kits in use for 282 included studies were likely the first kits developed by detection of SARS-CoV-2, and then the tests 283 currently in use might have a great technological evolvement and different characteristics to those 284 of the initial tools. 285 286 Despite the scarcity of information to answer the review question, our study carried out a 287 comprehensive literature search to identify all relevant studies, including several sources of 288 unpublished literature such as pre-print repositories. Our assessment also includes a rigorous 289 assessment of potential sources of bias, a formal statistical analysis of results and a final assessment 290 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.