Sensitivity of midturbinate versus nasopharyngeal swabs for the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Alainna Jamal, Mohammad Mozafarihashjin, Eric A. Coomes, Sofia Anceva-Sami, Shiva Barati, Gloria Crowl, Amna Faheem, Lubna Farooqi, Christopher Kandel, Saman Khan, Angel X. Li, Henna Mistry, Aimee Paterson, Simon Plenderleith, Karren Prost, Susan M. Poutanen, Jeff Powis, Renée Schryer, Maureen Taylor, Lily Yip, Xi Zhong, Allison McGeer, Samira Mubareka, for the Toronto Invasive Bacterial Diseases Network COVID-19 Investigators
Abstract
To compare sensitivity of specimens for COVID-19 diagnosis, we tested 151 nasopharyngeal/midturbinate swab pairs from 117 COVID-19 inpatients using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Sensitivity was 94% for nasopharyngeal and 75% for midturbinate swabs (P = .0001). In 88 nasopharyngeal/midturbinate pairs with matched saliva, sensitivity was 86% for nasopharyngeal swabs and 88% for combined midturbinate swabs/saliva.