Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant in children and utility of rapid antigen testing as an indicator of culturable virus.
Zoe M LohseJerne J ShapiroJohn A LednickyMelanie N CashInyoung JunCarla N MavianMassimiliano S TagliamonteCyrus SaleemYang YangEric J NelsonMarco SalemiKathleen A RyanJohn Glenn MorrisPublished in: Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2022)
We screened 65 longitudinally-collected nasal swab samples from 31 children aged 0-16 years who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 omicron BA.1. By day 7 after onset of symptoms 48% of children remained positive by rapid antigen test. In a sample subset we found 100% correlation between antigen test results and virus culture.