April 30, 2020

Cotton tipped plastic swabs for SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR diagnosis to prevent supplies shortage

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

• Freire-Paspuel et al. validated nasopharyngeal sampling for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis using inexpensive and easily available cotton-tipped plastic swabs with no inhibition effect over PCR reaction instead of plastic synthetic fiber tipped rayon swabs (gold standard by CDC) and found a total agreement among swabs (n=33 positives and n=11 negatives). These results suggest that cotton-tipped swabs could be just as reliable as the rayon swabs, indicating that they can be an option under lack of NP swabs supply. 

Freire-Paspuel et al. (Apr 29, 2020). Cotton tipped plastic swabs for SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR diagnosis to prevent supplies shortage. Pre-print downloaded Apr 30 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.28.20079947