A Direct Comparison of Enhanced Saliva to Nasopharyngeal Swab for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Symptomatic Patients.

ABSTRACT: The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in shortages of nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) and viral transport media, necessitating the search for alternate diagnostic specimens, such as saliva. We directly compared matched saliva and NPS specimens from symptomatic patients suspected of having COVID-19. An enhanced saliva specimen (i.e., strong sniff, elicited cough, and collection of saliva/secretions) was collected without transport medium prior to collection of NPS from 224 patients with symptoms deemed consistent with COVID-19. Both specimens were tested with the CDC 2019 nCoV real-time RT-PCR diagnostic panel (4 February 2020 version), with the NPS result used as the reference standard. For the 216 patients included in the final analysis, there was 100% positive

SUBMITTER: Procop GW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7587117 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature