New Study Finds Oropharyngeal Secretions May Reduce False Negatives in COVID-19 Testing

Researchers based in Wuhan, China found that testing oropharyngeal secretions reduced the number of false negative test results among those with COVID-19. The study looked at 75 patients who were being discharged from the hospital after receiving treatment for COVID-19. The subjects had all received two negative results for the novel coronavirus conducted using nasopharyngeal swabs. When study subjects were tested for the virus using oropharyngeal secretions, two were found to still be positive for SARS-CoV-2. The study, published in the Journal of Dental Research, also looked at an additional 50 ready-to-discharge patients recovered from COVID-19 and found that testing with oropharyngeal secretions missed only 14% of positive cases, compared with 59% of positive cases missed by testing with nasopharyngeal swabs. The authors suggest that testing oropharyngeal secretions may help decrease the number of individuals released from treatment while they still have active COVID-19 infections, but note that more research with larger sample sizes is needed. Click here to read more.