Saliva swabs effective alternative diagnostic sample for covid-19

Covid -19 continues to take life, fast management of patients and implicating effective infection control measures, both in and out of the healthcare setting is very essential. Nasal swabs also known as nasopharyngeal swabs are primary means to detect the virus, however its very discomforting in patients and can cause anxiety to some extent in them.

 Alternative methods for swabs to detect covid-19. It was observed that saliva samples allowed for the detection of 85.3% of positive patients, tongue swabs allowed for the detection of 67.6% of positive patients and buccal swabs allowed for detection of 20.8% of positive patients, when compared to nasopharyngeal swabs reported by a study in Journal of Clinical Virology.

Study concluded that using simple saliva collection can provide a less invasive and reliable alternative method for the detection of SARS-CoV2 particularly in those patients where invasive sampling is difficult and where regular repeat testing is required.