Home Saliva Tests For Covid-19 May Be Coming Soon(3)
In addition, Wiley and her team published more research results on hospitalized patients and healthcare workers in the New England Journal of Medicine, which supported the effectiveness of saliva testing. They found that 81% of saliva samples tested positive for the virus 1 to 5 days after diagnosis, while the nasopharyngeal samples tested 71%, indicating that saliva may be more accurate than mucus to represent whether the coronavirus is still somewhere in the body .
"Saliva represents the collection of all oral fluids, cleared from the salivary glands, nose drops, and even from the mucous membranes of the lungs," Wiley said.
In view of this, she is currently exploring whether a saliva test can be used to detect the virus in COVID-19 patients, but they do not have any symptoms-some experts estimate that this may include up to 40% of infected people. Because they are not sick, these asymptomatic people may spread the virus without knowing it. Wiley is continuing to work with the staff of the NBA Bubble Organization to determine whether saliva testing can help find asymptomatic patients faster, help them isolate and reduce their chances of spreading COVID-19 to others.
Expanding the test to more asymptomatic people will largely depend on whether the test is easy to perform-do-it-yourself and home-based testing may be necessary. In addition to tests that require people to spit saliva into a test tube, researchers from other companies are also studying paper strips that can read saliva samples. For example, California-based Decision Diagnostics is a leading manufacturer of diabetes test strips. The company has developed a saliva-based test strip to detect COVID-19, which is currently being tested in South Korea.
Wylie hopes that SalivaDirect will allow more small commercial laboratories to test for COVID-19, making the test easier, because saliva test does not require expensive equipment and personnel like other tests. Although scientists can perform thousands of PCR tests at the same time, this method requires specialized machines, and these machines are usually only used in large commercial testing laboratories and other well-resourced laboratory facilities. SalivaDirect can be executed by smaller laboratories, which can reduce the burden on large laboratories, because large laboratories have been experiencing delays in test results.
Wylie said: "We are working hard to work with small local laboratories that we want to build and operate to support schools, community groups, universities and colleges." "The more tests we do, the greater the reduction in transmission and hospitalization. This frees up time for larger diagnostic testing laboratories to process patient samples."
