And Saliva is better sample for COVID-19 testing?

“For lack of knowledge, my people perish” is one common phrase from scripture but difficult to practice if you ask me. In the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statistics had it that some samples collected from contact tracing duties were discarded and could not be analyzed. The cost of the human resource and consumable that had been used but could not yield the needed results could be enormous. I personally had even supported the need to discard those samples because of the saying “garbage in, garbage out”.

Little did we know that those samples that were discarded were even better alternatives for detecting SARS COV-2 in biological samples. Wyllie et al 2020, in a recent correspondence to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), saliva presents a better alternative to nasopharyngeal, which at the moment is touted as the most suitable sample to test for COVID-19. The concentration of the viral copies detected in saliva was higher than in nasopharyngeal up to 10 days after initial diagnosis.

Comparing the outcome of the study and the report presented, it is better to test people before they develop symptoms since “the level of SARS-CoV-2 RNA decreased after symptom onset”. Looking at the minimal biosafety requirement in collecting saliva samples and the logistical requirements, it is not rocket science for us to appreciate the fact that “saliva” should be immediately evaluated widely and accepted as one of the samples to test for COVID-19.

This should ring a bell that, we need to work at the lack of research into COVID-19 on the Africa continent and Ghana for that matter. Had we known that saliva is a better sample to test for COVID-19, some undiagnosed cases would have been saved right from the beginning. Again, is this raising another question of possible means of transmission through kissing? It will take only research to unravel this and many more that is known about the novel virus – SARS COV-2.

Thank you Dr. Chris Nyan for exposing me to this paper on the platform created by CelebrateLAb West Africa in collaboration with Africa Bio Ent, Ghana Health Service, and Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS).