Lim Ho-Jae, Baek Young-Hyun, Park Min-Young, Yang Jae-Hyun, Kim Min-Jin, Sung Nackmoon, Sohn Yong-Hak, Lee Sun-Hwa, Park Jung-Eun, Yang Yong-Jin
Department of Molecular Diagnostics, Seegene Medical Foundation, Seoul 04805, Korea.
Department of Integrative Biological Sciences & BK21 FOUR Educational Research Group for Age-Associated Disorder Control Technology, Chosun University, Gwangju 61452, Korea.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2022 Sep 21;12(10):2279. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics12102279.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the third highly pathogenic human coronavirus and is rapidly transmitted by infected individuals regardless of their symptoms. During the COVID-19 pandemic, owing to the dearth of skilled healthcare workers (HCWs) to collect samples for early diagnosis, self-collection emerged as a viable alternative. To evaluate the reliability of self-collection, we compared the virus detection rate using 3990 self-collected swabs and HCW-collected swabs, procured from the same individuals and collected immediately after the self-collection. The results of multiplex reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that the viral load in the HCW-collected swabs was marginally (18.4-28.8 times) higher than that in self-collected swabs. Self-collection showed no significant difference in sensitivity and specificity from HCW-collection (κ = 0.87, McNemar's test; = 0.19), indicating a comparable performance. These findings suggest that self-collected swabs are acceptable substitutes for HCW-collected swabs, and that their use improved the specimen screening efficiency and reduced the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCWs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）是第三种高致病性人类冠状病毒，无论感染者有无症状，均可迅速传播。在新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）大流行期间，由于缺乏技术熟练的医护人员来采集样本进行早期诊断，自我采集成为一种可行的替代方法。为了评估自我采集的可靠性，我们比较了从同一人群中获取的、自我采集后立即由医护人员采集的3990份咽拭子样本的病毒检测率。多重逆转录定量聚合酶链反应结果显示，医护人员采集的咽拭子中的病毒载量略高于自我采集的咽拭子（18.4 - 28.8倍）。自我采集在敏感性和特异性方面与医护人员采集无显著差异（κ = 0.87，McNemar检验；= 0.19），表明性能相当。这些发现表明，自我采集的咽拭子是医护人员采集的咽拭子的可接受替代品，其使用提高了样本筛查效率，并降低了COVID-19大流行期间及之后医护人员感染SARS-CoV-2 的风险。
