BinaxNOW Results:
San Francisco Healthy Holidays
Free COVID-19 Testing

Low-barrier COVID-19 testing campaign that offered rapid COVID-19 testing from Nov 22-24 & Nov 29 - Dec 2 at the 24th & Mission BART Plaza

Objective
Evaluate performance of Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 Rapid Test in a community-based test-and-respond, to reduce time to isolation for persons with high-levels of virus to prevent transmission.

Total Persons Tested

3,302

99 aged less than 13 years

110 aged 13-18 years

3,093 aged over 18

30.9% self-reported possible COVID-19 symptoms

Demographics of Testers

Reported Gender:

45.4% female and 53.0% male

Reported Ethnicity:

65.6% LatinX, 9.2% Asian, 16.9% White, 1.6% American Indian and 2.5% Black

COVID-19 % Positivity

Overall:

237 persons overall were RT-PCR positive
211 persons were also rapid test positive

95 RT-PCR positive persons (40.1%) were asymptomatic and 7 (3.0%) had a symptoms that started >7 days prior to testing.

RT-PCR Positive Results Among Children:

19 out of 99 (19.4%) children <13 years of age
16 out of 110 (14.5%) teens among 13-18 years of age

Impact

  1. Use of rapid testing can reduce turn-around-time alone afforded by BinaxNOW (approximately one hour), as compared to an RT-PCR turnaround of 4 days—potentially eliminating four highly infectious days that would otherwise be spent out of isolation

  2. Contact tracing was initiated 24-48 hours earlier than would have been possible through routine city sponsored RT-PCR testing

  3. Found that BinaxNOW reliably detects infectious persons with large amounts of virus.