Self-collection of nasopharyngeal swab and molecular test in pool testing as strategies for detecting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): feasibility in medical students at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-49742022000100002Keywords:
COVID-19, Epidemiological Inquiries, Pandemic, Pool Testing, RT-PCR, SARS-CoV-2Abstract
Objective: To show the feasibility of using combined nasopharyngeal swab auto-collection and pool testing to detect SARS-CoV-2 in epidemiological surveys. Methods: The study involved a sample of 154 students from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, who performed the self-collection of the nasopharyngeal swab in individual booths without supervision. Molecular testing was performed using the pool testing technique. Results: Obtaining samples lasted about 5 minutes each. Analysis 6 was performed to detect endogenous RNA in 40 samples, and the results indicated that no failures resulted from self-collection. None of the pools detected the presence of viral RNA. The cost of performing the molecular test (RT-PCR) by pool testing with samples obtained by self-collection was about 10 times lower than with the usual methods. Conclusion: The investigated strategies showed to be economically feasible and valid for the research of SARS-CoV-2 in epidemiological surveys.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Murilo Soares Costas, Nathalia Sernizon Guimarães, Claudia Regina Lindgren Alves, Eliane Leandro Machado, Hugo Itaru Sato, Eduarda de Carvalho Maia e Amaral, Rafaela Galvão Arivabene, Karine Lima Lourenço, Unaí Tupinambás, Flávio Guimarães da Fonseca, Ricardo Hiroshi Caldeira Takahashi, Santuza Maria Ribeiro Teixeira
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
