Self-collected oral, nasal and saliva samples yield sensitivity comparable to professional-collected oro-nasopharyngeal swabs in SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis among symptomatic outpatients

Containment of the current COVID-19 pandemic(Lu et al., 2020, Zhu et al., 2020) requires broad-scale testing capacities(Zhu and Wong, 2020) for patients, potentially contagious persons and groups at risk of infection. Laboratory capacities for real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rtRT-PCR) have been significantly increased in many countries, and are complemented by novel rapid test devices based on antigen detection(Rai et al., 2021). Still, professional-collected (oro-)nasopharyngeal samples are considered the gold standard(Marty et al., 2020, Pan et al., 2020).

Source: International Journal of Infectious Diseases - July 21, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Maximilian Gertler, Eva Krause, Welmoed van Loon, Niklas Krug, Franka Kausch, Chiara Rohardt, Heike R össig, Janine Michel, Andreas Nitsche, Marcus A. Mall, Olga Nikolai, Franziska Hommes, Susen Burock, Andreas K. Lindner, Frank P. Mockenhaupt, Ulrich Pi Source Type: research