Saliva‐based testing for diagnosis of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection: A meta‐analysis.

One study estimated specificity of saliva-based test in a subsample of patients, which excluded most of the test negative patients. Average sensitivity was 0.85 (95% CI: 0.77-0.91) and average specificity 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98-1.00) with saliva-based index test compared with NPS or OPS based reference test (Figure 1). Some reasons, like lower viral loads in saliva specimens, might explain why saliva is an inferior specimen type compared with swab specimen for the detection of SARS-COV-2. [Extracted from the article]