How many are we missing with ID NOW COVID-19 assay using direct nasopharyngeal swabs? Findings from a mid-sized academic hospital clinical microbiology laboratory.

Here, we retrospectively analyzed the comparative results of 182 paired dry nasopharyngeal swabs tested by Abbott ID NOW and nasopharyngeal swabs in viral transport medium by real-time RT-PCR methods. While the overall agreement was 96.2%, we found that of 15 samples that were tested positive with RT-PCR methods, 7 were missed by ID NOW, resulting in a false-negative rate of 47%.