Joey D
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- 47,520
- Lakes of the North, MI
- GTP_Joey
- GTP Joey
It looks like the saliva testing is just as accurate, if not more accurate than the nasopharyngeal swab. This is fantastic news because the roto-rooter test is fairly terrible. If I could just spit into a tube, that would be so much nicer. Thankfully, the hospital where I'm at will have the saliva tests available in the next few weeks.
Saliva or Nasopharyngeal Swab Specimens for Detection of SARS-CoV-2
Besides being way more comfortable for the patient, these tests should also reduce the bottleneck of testing. While I'm not sure this will lead to mail-in testing, at least not yet anyway, testing sites could have cars line up and a nurse delivers the tube to the car. Then after you're done spitting, you put your hazards on or something to signal you're finished. In theory, several people could be doing the test at once instead of waiting in line for your turn. In addition, this would also decrease the time the clinical person spends with the patient making it safer for them.
There's also an opportunity to have these available at pharmacies where you can pick them up like any prescription and then drop off your sample at a lab. I know for some this seems odd, but people bring all sorts of bodily fluids in labs that they collected themselves at home (i.e. stool sample).
Now they just need to ramp up the production of the rapid tests. Once they do that, the roadblocks for testing should be minimal with the major bottleneck shifting to the lab's ability to process the tests. I have to imagine it's fairly easy to process the test though since despite thousands of people getting tested every day here in Utah, I still got my results back in less than 24 hours. I think the average is something like 18 hours through our lab, but we tell everyone 24-48 hours just to be safe.
Saliva or Nasopharyngeal Swab Specimens for Detection of SARS-CoV-2
Besides being way more comfortable for the patient, these tests should also reduce the bottleneck of testing. While I'm not sure this will lead to mail-in testing, at least not yet anyway, testing sites could have cars line up and a nurse delivers the tube to the car. Then after you're done spitting, you put your hazards on or something to signal you're finished. In theory, several people could be doing the test at once instead of waiting in line for your turn. In addition, this would also decrease the time the clinical person spends with the patient making it safer for them.
There's also an opportunity to have these available at pharmacies where you can pick them up like any prescription and then drop off your sample at a lab. I know for some this seems odd, but people bring all sorts of bodily fluids in labs that they collected themselves at home (i.e. stool sample).
Now they just need to ramp up the production of the rapid tests. Once they do that, the roadblocks for testing should be minimal with the major bottleneck shifting to the lab's ability to process the tests. I have to imagine it's fairly easy to process the test though since despite thousands of people getting tested every day here in Utah, I still got my results back in less than 24 hours. I think the average is something like 18 hours through our lab, but we tell everyone 24-48 hours just to be safe.
