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COVID-19 Community Transmission and Super Spreaders in Rural Villages from Manabi Province in the Coastal Region of Ecuador Assessed by Massive Testing of Community-Dwelling Population

2021; American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; Volume: 106; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4269/ajtmh.21-0582

1476-1645

Maria Belén Rodriguez-Paredes, Alexander Paolo Vallejo-Janeta, Diana Morales-Jadán, Byron Freire‐Paspuel, Esteban Ortiz‐Prado, Aquiles R. Henríquez-Trujillo, Ismar A. Rivera‐Olivero, Tatiana Jaramillo, Tannya Lozada, Miguel Ángel García-Bereguiain, Lorie A. Kloda,

COVID-19 diagnosis using AI

Neglected rural communities in Latin America are highly vulnerable to COVID-19 due to a poor health infrastructure and limited access to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) diagnosis. Manabí is a province of the Coastal Region of Ecuador characterized by a high prevalence of rural population living under poverty conditions. In the current study, we present the retrospective analysis of the results of a massive SARS-CoV-2 testing operation in nonhospitalized populations from Manabí carried out from August to September 2020. A total of 4,003 people from 15 cantons were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by reverse-transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction, resulting in an overall infection rate of 16.13% for SARS-CoV-2, with several communities > 30%. Moreover, 29 SARS-CoV-2 super-spreader community-dwelling individuals with viral loads above 108 copies/mL were found. These results support that uncontrolled COVID-19 community transmission was happening in Manabí during the first semester of COVID-19 pandemic. This report endorses the utility of massive SARS-CoV-2 testing among asymptomatic population for control and surveillance of COVID-19.