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Great article on #COVID rapid antigen #testing and #hospitalization and community #transmission in the #BMJ. Bottom line: Large scale asymptomatic rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 could help reduce transmission and prevent hospital admissions. #publichealth #causalinference #epidemiology
The BMJImpact of community asymptomatic rapid antigen testing on covid-19 related hospital admissions: synthetic control studyObjective To analyse the impact of voluntary rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 antigen in Liverpool city on covid-19 related hospital admissions.
Design Synthetic control analysis comparing hospital admissions for small areas in the intervention population with a group of control areas weighted to be similar for past covid-19 related hospital admission rates and sociodemographic factors.
Setting Liverpool city, UK, 6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021, under the intervention of Covid-SMART (systematic meaningful asymptomatic repeated testing) voluntary, open access supervised self-testing with lateral flow devices, compared with control areas selected from the rest of England.
Population General population of Liverpool (n=498 042) and a synthetic control population from the rest of England.
Main outcome measure Weekly covid-19 related hospital admissions for neighbourhoods in England.
Results The introduction of community testing was associated with a 43% (95% confidence interval 29% to 57%) reduction (146 (96 to 192) in total) in covid-19 related hospital admissions in Liverpool compared with the synthetic control population (non-adjacent set of neighbourhoods with aggregate trends in covid-19 hospital admissions similar to Liverpool) for the initial period of intensive testing with military assistance in national lockdown from 6 November to 3 December 2020. A 25% (11% to 35%) reduction (239 (104 to 333) in total) was estimated across the overall intervention period (6 November 2020 to 2 January 2021), involving fewer testing centres, before England’s national roll-out of community testing, after adjusting for regional differences in tiers of covid-19 restrictions from 3 December 2020 to 2 January 2021.
Conclusions The city-wide pilot of community based asymptomatic testing for SARS-CoV-2 was associated with substantially reduced covid-19 related hospital admissions. Large scale asymptomatic rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 could help reduce transmission and prevent hospital admissions.
The small area covid-19 hospital admissions data were made available by NHS Digital under data sharing agreement DARS-NIC-16656-D9B5T-v3.10 and are available through application to NHS Digital. All other data are publicly accessible and code is available via the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative GitHub public repository (<https://github.com/civicdatacoop/COVID-SMART-in-Liverpool/tree/main>).
@gregggonsalves
But...but...if we *test* more, won't cases go *up*???
/sarcasm
@gregggonsalves With all the respiratory illnesses circulating this winter, “it’s just a cold” is and will be the standard reaction for them all. 
@lzvolk Until it's their kid or grandparent in the ICU.