Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Intervention Involving Rapid Antigen Testing of Students for COVID-19 in Reducing Absences From Schools in Bangladesh

The goal of this trial is to evaluate the impact of different testing strategies with Rapid Antigen Testing (RAT) on reduction of school absences. RATs are relatively inexpensive, fast, and can be performed at the point of care. Provision of testing in schools will allow rapid identification and isolation of individuals infected with Covid-19. This will likely reduce COVID-19 transmission, as well as allow symptomatic COVID-19 negative students to return to classroom, avoiding the 10-days isolation period. If proven successful, the lessons from this study can be translated to schools in similar settings. While several testing strategies have been proposed and evaluated in developed countries, no studies have evaluated the role of testing for safe operation of schools or reducing absenteeism in developing country contexts.The lessons learned from this study is likely to inform government policy regarding the provision of testing in school.

Study design: Cluster randomized trial

School types: Three types based on testing:

• Intervention school-1: Test all symptomatic students, teachers, and support staff ; and track symptoms and absenteeism
• Intervention school-2: Test all students, teachers, and support staff every 3 days, irrespective of symptoms (also test whenever develops symptoms) and track symptoms and absenteeism
• Control school: Only track the students for symptom notification and absenteeism