• Meiyan Li, Ruoyan Wei, Yaling Yang, Taiwen He, Yinzhong Shen, Tangkai Qi, Tian Han, Zhigang Song, Zhaoqin Zhu, Xiaopeng Ma, Yixiao Lin, Yasheng Yuan, Keqing Zhao, Hongzhou Lu, and Xingtao Zhou.
• Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Eye and ENT Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
• Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2021 Jan 1; 11: 653794.

PurposeTo investigate the sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 testing in specimens collected from the anterior nasal vestibules of COVID-19 patients.MethodsA cross-sectional analysis was performed on 30 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center from March 14, 2020 to March 21, 2020. Paired specimens were collected from both the anterior nasal vestibule and the oropharynx from all patients. All specimens were tested for SARS-CoV-2 using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays.ResultsOf the 30 patients with confirmed COVID-19, 17 patients (56.7%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 when oropharyngeal specimens were used, while 20 patients (66.7%) tested positive when nasal swab specimens were used. There was no statistically significant difference in sensitivity between the two methods.ConclusionsRespiratory swabs collected from the nasal vestibule offer a less invasive alternative to oropharyngeal swabs for specimen collection in the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and have adequate sensitivity.Copyright © 2021 Li, Wei, Yang, He, Shen, Qi, Han, Song, Zhu, Ma, Lin, Yuan, Zhao, Lu and Zhou.

11 keywords...

hide…