ACHA publication: VIVALDI-CT shaping care home COVID-19 testing policy: A pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of asymptomatic testing compared to standard care in care home staff

This paper reports a study led from University College London with input from ACHA Professor Adam Gordon.  It describes a randomised trial to investigate whether increased testing for COVID-19, accompanied by enhanced procedures around staff sick pay and agency backfill, could reduce the rate of COVID-19 in these settings.  It was conducted from January to August 2023, after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The study was stopped early because we did not see enough COVID-19 in the care home setting during this time to adequately draw conclusions from a randomised controlled trial.  We did, however, learn important lessons about implementation of testing and staff absence procedures in this setting which will be useful for future epidemics or pandemics.  You can read the article in full here.