How home anterior self-collected nasal swab simplifies SARS-CoV-2 testing: new surveillance horizons in public health and beyond

Abstract

Abstract The sample collection procedure for SARS-CoV-2 has a strong impact on diagnostic capability, contact tracing approach, ultimately affecting the infection containment performance. This study demonstrates that self-collected nasal-swab has shown to be a valid and well tolerated procedure to SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in a healthcare system. More significantly, no performance adequacy difference was detected in self-administered swabs between healthcare worker (HCW) and non-HCW which allows to speculate that this procedure could be successfully extended to the entire population for mass screening.

Keywords

• Self-swab
• Nasal-swab
• SARS-CoV-2 testing
• Surveillance