New Zealand
Saliva tests are basically as good as intrusive nasopharyngeal swabs for detecting Covid-19, a New Zealand study finds. Researchers used both tests on nearly 200 people across the country, finding the saliva tests detected 91% of positive Covid-19 cases, while the nose swabs detected 93%. The study authors say providing more tolerable Covid-19 tests is "desirable", but that saliva testing requires a different workflow in the laboratory, which may affect turnaround times when there are a lot of tests to process.
From:
Overall, the COVID-19 virus can be detected just as well from the nasopharynx as from the saliva. However, at any given time, in a given person, the amount of virus might be higher in the nasopharynx than the saliva or vice versa.
Sign In
