Saliva Test Could Help Many Return to Work

Governors in the Northeast say they need more COVID-19 diagnostic tests before people can return to work safely. Researchers at Yale are the latest to study a saliva test they say is easier to administer and more reliable than standard nasal swabs.

Health care workers wear head-to-toe protection to test someone for COVID-19. They have to sample mucus at the back of the nasal cavity with a long swab.

“I’ve had one and they’re very unpleasant,” says Anne Wyllie, a researcher at Yale School of Public Health. “The risk with that is it can actually cause the patient or the person being sampled to sneeze or cough. You can imagine if you’re that health care worker and you’re in very close proximity, that can carry quite a bit of risk when we know that SARS-CoV-2 [or coronavirus] gets spread by droplets.”

Wyllie and her colleagues say in a new pre-print study they have found a quick way to test for coronavirus that doesn’t require protective gear, or nasal swabs.

“Saliva sampling is really easy, it’s actually incredibly easy as compared to the gold standard recommended nasopharyngeal swab.”

She says Yale began asking COVID-19 patients and hospital workers to spit into a sterile collection cup when the outbreak began. They’ve continued to run RNA tests on nasal swabs alongside saliva samples. They found the saliva results look more consistent than the nasal swabs.

Read the rest of this story at WSHU’s website.