Nursing homes that conducted staff surveillance testing more regularly experienced lower rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths among residents, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine released Wednesday.
“This research demonstrates that frequent Covid surveillance testing protected nursing home residents and undoubtedly saved lives by detecting more infected staff, potentially earlier in the disease course, and disrupting potential viral transmission chains,” said Brian McGarry, an assistant professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in a press release.
According to researchers, the team separated their analysis into three timeframes: the period before Covid vaccines were available, after vaccines became available, but before the omicron wave hit, and during the omicron wave.
Researchers compiled a database that tracked more than 90 million Covid test results for staff in 13,433 skilled nursing facilities from 2020 to 2022.
For each of these periods, the researchers measured the association between the frequency of staff surveillance testing and the number of infections and deaths that occurred during Covid outbreaks in the facilities.
Notably, researchers found that had all facilities performed an additional test per staff member per week during the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic, 30% of resident cases and 26% resident Covid deaths could have been prevented.
However, surveillance testing was not strongly associated with cases or deaths during the post-vaccine phase.
“Testing is a key part of any infectious disease response, surveillance testing in particular,” said McGarry. “This study found that greater surveillance testing of nursing home staff was associated with clinically meaningful reductions in resident Covid cases and deaths, particularly before the availability of vaccines.”