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Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in the community by nucleic acid amplification testing of saliva

Authors :
Anna Helander
Filippo Fronza
Simone Bridi
Massimo Pizzato
Beatrice Zita Passerini
Antonio Ferro
Valentina Adami
Patrizio Caciagli
Guido Poli
Irene Cortelletti
Elena Piffer
Lucia Collini
Serena Pancheri
Angela Martinelli
Sonia Garritano
Valentina Greco
Nicolo Vivori
Veronica De Sanctis
Maria Rosaria Capobianchi
Giancarlo Icardi
Alessandro Quattrone
Nicolo Rensi
Nelli Groff
Michael Pancher
Lara Stefani
Roberto Bertorelli
Publication Year :
2021
Publisher :
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2021.

Abstract

Efficient wide-scale testing for SARS-CoV-2 is crucial for monitoring the incidence of the infection in the community. The gold standard for COVID-19 diagnosis is the molecular analysis of epithelial secretions from the upper respiratory system captured by nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs, which requires the intervention of trained personnel. Given the ease of collection, saliva has been proposed as a possible substitute to support testing at the population level. Here we describe the set-up of a laboratory, in an academic context, for the high-throughput screening of SARS-CoV-2 in the saliva from the community. A novel saliva collection device was designed to favour the safe and correct acquisition of the sample as well as the processivity of the downstream molecular analysis. To test the performance of the system,1025 paired saliva and nasopharyngeal samples were collected from individuals recruited at a public drive through testing facility and analysed in parallel. An overall moderate concordance (68%) between the two tests was found, with evidence that neither test can diagnose the infection in 100% of the cases. While the two tests performed equally well in symptomatic individuals, their discordance was mainly restricted to samples from convalescent individuals. The saliva test was at least as effective as NP swabs in asymptomatic individuals recruited for contact tracing. Our study, therefore, indicates that saliva testing can be a reliable tool for wide-scale COVID-19 screening in the community.

Details

Database :
OpenAIRE
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........22832b7588289ba61e8f9ca18fac43d2