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Evaluation of transport media for laboratory detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 in upper respiratory tract swab specimens
Author(s) -
Penrod Yvonne,
Garcia Denise,
Dunn S. Terence
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of medical virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1096-9071
pISSN - 0146-6615
DOI - 10.1002/jmv.26643
Subject(s) - covid-19 , economic shortage , pandemic , coronavirus , virology , public health , medicine , medical emergency , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , linguistics , philosophy , government (linguistics) , outbreak
The reduced availability of commercial swabs and transport media for testing and administrative demands for increased testing capacity during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) public health emergency has seriously challenged national laboratory testing programs, forcing many to use nontraditional collection devices, often without typical analytical assessment of their suitability in testing. Five common transport media (four commercial and one in‐house) were evaluated for their suitability in the collection of nasopharyngeal swab specimens for subsequent molecular detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome‐associated coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2). Results suggest that these transport media provide dependable temporal stability of the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus without significant analytical interference of molecular assays. These findings are not only important for addressing critical laboratory supply chain shortages of transport media in the current COVID‐19 health crisis but also for future pandemic planning, when again supplies of commercially available transport media might be depleted.