JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

COVID-19 screening is an effective non-pharmaceutical intervention to identify infected individuals and interrupt viral transmission. However, questions have been raised for its effectiveness in controlling the spread of novel variants and high socioeconomic costs. Therefore, optimization of COVID-19 screening strategies has attracted great attention.

Objective:

This review aims to summarize the evidence and to provide a reference basis for the optimization of screening strategies in the prevention and control of COVID-19.

Methods:

This review was conducted following the framework of Arksey and O'Malley and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews. We conducted this scoping review of present publications on the optimization of COVID-19 screening strategies. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Elsevier ScienceDirect databases for publications up to July 8, 2022.

Results:

A total of 2,333 unique publications were retrieved from the database search and 94 abstracts were retained for full-text review; of these, 58 studies were included in the final review. We summarized the results in four major aspects, including the screening population (people at various risks conditions such as different regions and occupation), the timing of screening (when is target population are tested during a travel or an outbreak), the frequency of screening (appropriate frequencies for outbreak prevention, outbreak response, or community transmission control), and the screening and detection procedure (the choice of individual or pooled detection and optimization of the pooling approach).

Conclusions:

This review reveals gaps in the optimization of COVID-19 screening strategies and we suggest that a number of factors such as prevalence, screening accuracy, effective allocation of resources, and feasibility of strategies that should be carefully considered in the future screening strategies development.