Epidemiology organization no longer recommends asymptomatic COVID-19 screening for hospital patients

Editor's Note

The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) announced on December 21 that it no longer recommends Universal COVID-19 screening for asymptomatic hospital patients, reports December 21 Fierce Healthcare.

The new recommendation was published by the organization’s board of directors in the Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology journal. They wrote that there is an “unclear benefit” when compared to a healthcare facility’s other infection prevention methods, such as enhanced cleaning, ventilation, active COVID-19 screening of providers and universal N95 respirator usage during procedures.

“The small benefits that could come from asymptomatic testing at this stage in the pandemic are overridden by potential harms from delays in procedures, delays in patient transfers and strains on laboratory capacity and personnel,” Thomas R. Talbot, M.D., chief hospital epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a member of the SHEA board of directors, said in a press release, adding that results from COVID-19 testing may detect residual virus on a patient who is no longer contagious.

The group supported its decision with studies outlining potential negative impacts from universal asymptomatic screening. These studies found that that screening added unnecessary time to a patient’s stay, led to cost increases, placed patients into unnecessary isolation precautions, and created a burden on testing facilities.

“Although it is imperative to prevent healthcare-associated spread of respiratory pathogens, we must critically assess interventions that, when added upon core layers of infection prevention, may not attain the intended impact and may have unintended consequences for patients and [healthcare providers],” the authors wrote in the journal.

Read the Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology recommendation.