Anamnestic screening of symptoms and contact history is applied to identify coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) patients on admission. However, asymptomatic and presymptomatic patients remain undetected although the viral load may be high. In this retrospective cohort study, all hospitalized patients who received polymerase chain reaction (PCR) admission testing from March 26th until May 24th, 2020 were included. Data on COVID‐19‐specific symptoms and contact history to COVID‐19 cases were retrospectively extracted from patient files and from contact tracing notes. The compliance to the universal testing protocol was high with 90%. Out of 6940 tested patients, 27 new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 infections (0.4%) were detected. Seven of those COVID‐19 cases (26% of all new cases) were asymptomatic and had no positive contact history, but were identified through a positive PCR test. The number needed to identify an asymptomatic patient was 425 in the first wave of the epidemic, 1218 in the low incidence phase. The specificity of the method was above 99.9%. Universal PCR testing was highly accepted by staff as demonstrated by high compliance. The costs to detect one asymptomatic case in future studies need to be traded off against the costs and damage caused by potential outbreaks of COVID‐19.

中文翻译：

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德国三级医院SARS-CoV-2通用PCR入库筛查的性能和可行性

症状和接触史的回忆筛查可用于识别入院时的冠状病毒病2019（COVID-19）患者。然而，尽管病毒载量可能很高，但无症状和有症状的患者仍未被发现。在这项回顾性队列研究中，纳入了所有从2020年3月26日至2020年5月24日接受聚合酶链反应（PCR）入院测试的住院患者。回顾性地从患者档案和联系人跟踪记录中提取了有关COVID-19特定症状和与COVID-19病例的接触史的数据。通用测试协议的符合率很高，达到90％。在6940名接受测试的患者中，检测到27例新的严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒2感染（0.4％）。在这些COVID-19病例中，有7例（占所有新病例的26％）无症状，没有阳性接触史，但通过PCR阳性鉴定。识别无症状患者的数量在流行的第一波中为425，在低发病率阶段为1218。该方法的特异性在99.9％以上。通用PCR测试已被员工高度接受，这证明了其高度合规性。在将来的研究中，发现一个无症状病例的成本需要与可能爆发COVID-19引起的成本和损害之间进行权衡。通用PCR测试已被员工高度接受，这证明了其高度合规性。在将来的研究中，发现一个无症状病例的成本需要与可能爆发COVID-19引起的成本和损害之间进行权衡。通用PCR测试已被员工高度接受，这证明了其高度合规性。在将来的研究中，发现一个无症状病例的成本需要与可能爆发COVID-19引起的成本和损害之间进行权衡。