Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

April 6, 2020

Patient-collected tongue, nasal, and mid-turbinate swabs for SARS-CoV-2 yield equivalent sensitivity to health care worker collected nasopharyngeal swabs.

Category:

Topic:

  • This study explored the equivalency of patient-collected tongue, nasal and mid-turbinate samples to healthcare collected nasopharyngeal samples for detecting SARS-CoV-2. The sensitivity of patient collected samples was calculated to be above 90% and the sampling was feasible in ambulatory practice, even in cohorts of nearly 500 patients.  
  • Patient-collected sampling has several advantages over nasopharyngeal sampling: it reduces PPE use, is more comfortable to the patient, reduces the risk of exposure of the health workforce, and can improve clinical efficiency.  

Tu et al. (Apr 6, 2020). Patient-collected tongue, nasal, and mid-turbinate swabs for SARS-CoV-2 yield equivalent sensitivity to health care worker collected nasopharyngeal swabs. Pre-print downloaded Apr 6 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.01.20050005