ABSTRACT
We prospectively compared health care worker-collected nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) to self-collected anterior nasal swabs (ANS) and straight saliva for the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in 354 patients. The percent positive agreement between NPS and ANS or saliva was 86.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 76.7 to 92.9%) and 93.8% (95% CI, 86.0 to 97.9%), respectively. The percent negative agreement was 99.6% (95% CI, 98.0 to 100.0%) for NPS versus ANS and 97.8% (95% CI, 95.3 to 99.2%) for NPS versus saliva. More cases were detected by the use of NPS (n = 80) and saliva (n = 81) than by the use of ANS (n = 70), but no single specimen type detected all severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.
FOOTNOTES
- Received 14 July 2020.
- Returned for modification 27 July 2020.
- Accepted 10 August 2020.
- Accepted manuscript posted online 12 August 2020.
Supplemental material is available online only.
- Copyright © 2020 American Society for Microbiology.
This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted noncommercial re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
