Self-Collected Oral Fluid and Nasal Swabs Demonstrate Comparable Sensitivity to Clinician Collected Nasopharyngeal Swabs for Coronavirus Disease 2019 Detection

We compared self-collected oral fluid swab specimens with and without clinician supervision, clinician-supervised self-collected anterior nasal swab specimens, and clinician-collected nasopharyngeal swab specimens for the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Supervised oral fluid and nasal swab specimens performed similarly to clinician-collected nasopharyngeal swab specimens. No sample type could detect SARS-CoV-2 infections amongst all positive participants.

Automated summary

Both supervised oral fluid and nasal swab specimens performed similarly to clinician-collected nasopharyngeal swab specimens in detecting SARS-CoV-2, and none of the positive participants were detected using any sample type.