December 3, 2020

Pooled Saliva Specimens for SARS-CoV-2 Testing

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

Keywords (Tags): testing

• A prospective study of pooled saliva specimens for RT-PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 yielded lower sensitivity compared to nasopharyngeal (NP) or mid-turbinate (MT) swabs, but adequate detection in samples with high viral loads. Saliva specimens had 81.8% positive agreement with NP swabs, which rose to 90.0% positive agreement among samples with moderate to high viral load (Ct ≤34) in an analysis comparing 459 paired NP and MT swabs from 449 symptomatic individuals.

Barat et al. (Dec 1, 2020). Pooled Saliva Specimens for SARS-CoV-2 Testing. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.02486-20