Back in January there was a bunch of buzz around using standard rapid
tests but swabbing the throat. Ex:
On one side are well-regarded experts who argue that swabbing your
throat in addition to your nose may increase the chances that a home
test can detect omicron. On the other side are similarly well-regarded
experts, including those at the Food and Drug Administration, who urge
Americans to avoid experimenting with kits that were developed and
tested using only nasal swabs.
—Washington
Post, 2022-01-06
or:
if you want to know if you have infectious Covid-19, you need to
use throat swabs. It’s still not 100% sensitivity or anything, but
it’s a lot better, whereas nose swabs are useful but in no way all
that reassuring.
—Zvi, 2022-01-13
Then the buzz died down, and it seems like everyone just forgot about
it? No clear recommendation either way, just a lot of Tweets, a few
blog posts, news stories about the controversy, and then not much
else. Google Trends shows the spike and drop-off:
[EDIT: I wouldn’t read too much into the chart: it turns out that most covid-related keywords followed as similar trend, as did covid itself]
What happened? Why did we all stop talking about it, without what
seems like any firm conclusions? Some of this is maybe that there
were conflicting studies: Schrom et. al. posted a preprint
on 2022-01-19 (published
version) where it looked like it worked poorly, but Goodall
et. al. posted a
different preprint on 2022-01-21 (published
version) where it did look good. I also saw speculation that some
of the cases where people got a negative with nasal swabbing but a
positive with throat swabbing may have been false
positives—rapid tests are sensitive
to pH, and especially if you’ve been eating or drinking recently
your throat might be pretty far from neutral.
Ten months later, why hasn’t this settled out into recommendations
that either say to swab throat and then nose, or that seem to have
considered the new evidence and say still don’t? We’re doing a lot of
testing, and if this is a better way to be using the tests we already
have it would be great to know! Does anyone whose been following this
have a better understanding of what happened?
Rapid Test Throat Swabbing?
Link post
Back in January there was a bunch of buzz around using standard rapid tests but swabbing the throat. Ex:
or:
Then the buzz died down, and it seems like everyone just forgot about it? No clear recommendation either way, just a lot of Tweets, a few blog posts, news stories about the controversy, and then not much else. Google Trends shows the spike and drop-off:
[EDIT: I wouldn’t read too much into the chart: it turns out that most covid-related keywords followed as similar trend, as did covid itself]
What happened? Why did we all stop talking about it, without what seems like any firm conclusions? Some of this is maybe that there were conflicting studies: Schrom et. al. posted a preprint on 2022-01-19 (published version) where it looked like it worked poorly, but Goodall et. al. posted a different preprint on 2022-01-21 (published version) where it did look good. I also saw speculation that some of the cases where people got a negative with nasal swabbing but a positive with throat swabbing may have been false positives—rapid tests are sensitive to pH, and especially if you’ve been eating or drinking recently your throat might be pretty far from neutral.
Ten months later, why hasn’t this settled out into recommendations that either say to swab throat and then nose, or that seem to have considered the new evidence and say still don’t? We’re doing a lot of testing, and if this is a better way to be using the tests we already have it would be great to know! Does anyone whose been following this have a better understanding of what happened?
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