COVID testing packages could enhance dangerous conduct, examine finds

Frequent, obligatory surveillance testing was one of many strategies deployed in some jurisdictions in an try to manage COVID-19, however new analysis reveals that such testing could have the unintended consequence of yielding riskier conduct by these enrolled within the testing.

Primarily based on a false sense of safety, college students who participated in frequent COVID-19 testing at two universities engaged in additional conduct recognized to extend the chance of spreading the virus than they could have in any other case, in accordance with outcomes of surveys led by College of Wyoming economists.

“Current analysis gives some proof that folks enhance dangerous conduct in response to facemask sporting and vaccines, however that is the primary examine to look at the behavioral responses to obligatory testing,” wrote researchers Chian Jones Ritten, Linda Thunstrom and Todd Cherry, of UW, and J.D. Wulfhorst, of the College of Idaho. “General, (our) outcomes counsel that college students perceived that the obligatory testing coverage decreased their threat of contracting COVID-19, and that this notion led to larger participation in COVID-risky occasions.”

The analysis findings had been revealed Friday in PNAS Nexus.

Through the fall 2020 semester, UW required all on-campus undergraduate college students to be examined for COVID twice weekly, whereas the College of Idaho examined a small random pattern of scholars weekly. Each universities required masks for all indoor occasions on campus.

The researchers surveyed college students at each universities and located that in each circumstances, respondents who had been examined extra regularly perceived that they had been at a lowered threat of contracting the virus. These people additionally extra regularly attended “dangerous” occasions resembling giant and small indoor gatherings and frequented eating places and bars.

From a public well being standpoint, such conduct is problematic as a result of inaccurate and delayed check outcomes may end up in individuals who imagine they don’t seem to be contaminated carrying the virus and infecting others. Though maybe unlikely, it’s attainable that the advantages of testing packages might be fully offset by elevated viral transmission, the researchers say.

Whereas different analysis reveals that in different contexts, the sort of threat compensation conduct is usually small in magnitude, small behavioral adjustments could result in significant will increase in illness unfold.

“These unintended penalties could pose a very giant menace to public well being when incubation instances are brief, the virus is extremely transmissible and the chance of false negatives is excessive, resembling with the omicron variant of the coronavirus,” the researchers wrote.

Curiously, the surveys discovered that girls, greater than males, understand that elevated testing reduces the chance of contracting the virus—and are thus extra prone to enhance dangerous conduct than males.

General, the analysis reveals that obligatory testing packages must be accompanied by mitigation measures to cut back the unintended consequence of individuals partaking in riskier conduct, the researchers say.

“Our findings counsel that packages with frequent testing could unintentionally enhance conduct recognized to contribute to virus unfold—the potential penalties of that are amplified by the exponential nature of viral unfold,” the researchers concluded. “Thus, when implementing obligatory testing packages to handle a pathogen, it is very important talk the packages’ limitations in defending in opposition to an infection and spotlight the potential for unintended behavioral responses.”