Extreme differences in SARS-CoV-2 viral loads among respiratory specimen types during presumed pre-infectious and infectious periods
Viloria Winnett et al.
The finding, in our words
Daily self-sampling showed SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in saliva and throat swabs rose as many as seven days earlier than in nasal swabs, with extreme differences up to ten to the ninth copies per millilitre between specimen types from the same person at the same timepoint. For decentralised diagnostics, this means single-specimen testing underestimates infectiousness and misses early infection, suggesting combined throat-nasal swabs offer superior clinical sensitivity for detecting pre-infectious and infectious individuals.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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