ArticleBMJ global health2025
Rapid establishment of public sector COVID-19 test-and-treatment programmes across seven low- and middle-income countries: implementation strategies and program monitoring results.
Article in BMJ global health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
28 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 Treatment QuickStart Consortium worked with governments in seven low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), Ghana, Laos, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, to implement COVID-19 test-and-treat programmes at 776 health facilities, including training over 5000 staff and facilitating a donation of 11 300 courses of the oral antiviral nirmatrelvir/ritonavir for treatment. This paper describes the process of implementing COVID-19 test-and-treat programmes in each country, provides aggregate programme monitoring data on numbers tested and treated and analyzes programme enablers and challenges. Between country-level programme initiation (Ghana, May 2023; Laos and Malawi, July 2023; Nigeria, June 2023; Rwanda, March 2023; Uganda, September 2023; Zambia, December 2022) and June 2024, a total of 731 970 SARS-CoV-2 tests were conducted. Of 6724 positive tests, a subset were documented to meet eligibility criteria for nirmatrelvir/ritonavir initiation, and 3041 patients were prescribed nirmatrelvir/ritonavir. The largest number of prescriptions was in Zambia. Programme enablers included decentralisation of services; task-shifting from higher to lower health worker cadres; increased access to point of care antigen tests, including self-tests; and the integration of COVID-19 with other health services. Challenges included COVID-19 de-prioritisation at the time of programme rollout, test commodity stockouts and expiries, and dwindling national surveillance efforts. Learnings from rapid initiation and scale-up of COVID-19 test-and-treat programmes in these seven countries can be used to inform future pandemic preparedness strategies in LMICs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.