Open AccessSARS-CoV-2 Breath Tests Implementation for the Rapid COVID-19 Surveillance: A Game Changer?- A Review of Existing Data
Author(s) -
Alejandro Vallejo Degaudenzi,
Daniela M. Hernandez,
Daniela Hidalgo,
Elisa Contreras,
Marı́a L. de Ceballos,
Mariel Polanco,
Máximo Reynoso,
Nicole Hernández,
Camila Marranzini,
Robert PaulinoRamirez
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
interamerican journal of medicine and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2595-6647
DOI - 10.31005/iajmh.v4i.198
Subject(s) - covid-19 , pandemic , gold standard (test) , identification (biology) , virology , molecular diagnostics , coronavirus , nucleic acid detection , environmental health , business , computer science , medicine , intensive care medicine , risk analysis (engineering) , medical emergency , biology , disease , nucleic acid , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , bioinformatics , outbreak , botany , biochemistry
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been spread across the globe for almost a year, causing economic, social, and psychological impacts with yet unknown dimensions. In emerging and reemerging pathogen surveillance and detection, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a classic laboratory technique that has been widely used for the amplification and identification of nucleic acids. Analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath has been long reviewed as a potential diagnostics tool for many diseases. The overall specificity for SARS-CoV-2 of these methods was a calculated 69%,30 which is a low value for reliable detection. Breath tests are not a sufficiently evidence-based approach for rapid screening and to "secure" or creating "sanctuary" regions for touristic purposes. Therefore, policy-makers must cautiously point out the importance of further evaluation and structured studies confronting gold-standards with new devices.