Contestualization

SARS-CoV-2, a novel beta-coronavirus, emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, and the subsequent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic rapidly raised. The implementation of mass testing efforts followed by contact tracing will be necessary to quell the pandemic. The nasopharyngeal swab has been the gold standard method - from both a diagnostic and a legal perspective – to offer a conclusive diagnosis.

However, saliva can serve as an alternative upper respiratory tract specimen type for SARS-CoV-2 detection.

Saliva specimen offers a number of advantages over nasopharyngeal swabs such as the non-invasive collection of samples, the potential for self-collection which is more safer and the diminished risk of transmission to healthcare workers from being inadvertently exposed to potentially infectious droplets

The samples collected with swabs and the saliva samples, collected with suitable collection devices, need to be assessed in laboratories with a specific molecular analysis of the viral RNA performed on a real time-PCR instrument.