Can kids learn to accurately self-test for COVID-19?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-08-27 01:00

International

School-aged kids and teens can learn to self-collect nasal swabs for COVID-19 tests after some simple instructions, according to international researchers who found these self-collected test results closely agreed with those of healthcare workers. The team gave 197 young people aged 4-14 instructional materials, including a video and handouts, to teach them how to self-collect nasal swabs for COVID-19 tests. The kids were then asked to self-collect a nasal swab, and healthcare workers collected a second specimen. The team found that self-collected nasal swabs that were positive for SARS-CoV-2 agreed with results from health care worker–collected swabs in 97.8%of participants, while self-collected swabs that were negative agreed with health care worker–collected swabs in 98.1%of participants.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Emory University School of Medicine, USA

Funder: This work was supported by the NIBIB at the NIH under awards U54 EB027690-03S1 and U54 EB027690-03S2 and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the NIH under award UL1TR002378. The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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