All from Microbiology Division, Public Health Laboratory Services Branch, Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
All from Microbiology Division, Public Health Laboratory Services Branch, Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
J Virol Methods. 2022 Feb;300:114396. doi: 10.1016/j.jviromet.2021.114396. Epub 2021 Nov 29.
Combined nasal-and-throat swabs (CNTS) is less invasive and easy to execute. CNTS also induces lower risk to healthcare workers upon collection. However, there is a lack of data on viral load assessment for population-wide testing.
This study assessed if CNTS is suitable as an alternative specimen type for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.
We assessed the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in CNTS collected from COVID-19 individuals through the 2-week period of the Universal Community Testing Programme (UCTP) conducted in Hong Kong. In addition, we compared viral loads of SARS-CoV-2 for the paired CNTS and non-CNTS specimens among these individuals.
This UCTP identified 48 COVID-19 individuals from nearly 2 million specimens collected. The viral loads of SARS-CoV-2 varied widely, cycle threshold values Ct 16.28-36.94, among symptoms and asymptomatic individuals. The viral loads for the paired CNTS and non-CNTS specimens were comparable.
This study demonstrated that CNTS could be a specimen of choice for diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2.
鼻咽联合拭子（CNTS）侵袭性更小，操作更简便。采集时，医护人员面临的风险也更低。但目前尚缺乏关于全人群检测中病毒载量评估的相关数据。
本研究旨在评估 CNTS 是否可作为 SARS-CoV-2 检测的替代标本类型。
我们通过香港全民检测计划（UCTP），评估了 COVID-19 患者在 2 周时间内采集的 CNTS 样本中的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒载量。此外，我们比较了这些患者的 CNTS 和非 CNTS 配对样本中的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒载量。
UCTP 从近 200 万份采集样本中发现了 48 例 COVID-19 患者。有症状和无症状患者的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒载量差异很大，Ct 值为 16.28-36.94。CNTS 和非 CNTS 配对标本的病毒载量相当。
本研究表明，CNTS 可作为 SARS-CoV-2 诊断的首选标本。
