Self-Collected Saline Gargle Samples as an Alternative to Health Care Worker-Collected Nasopharyngeal Swabs for COVID-19 Diagnosis in Outpatients

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Abstract

We assessed the performance, stability, and user acceptability of swab-independent self-collected saliva and saline mouth rinse/gargle sample types for the molecular detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in adults and school-aged children. Outpatients who had recently been diagnosed with COVID-19 or were presenting with suspected COVID-19 were asked to have a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab collected and provide at least one self-collected sample type.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.13.20188334: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Verbal consent was obtained from all participants and for those who provided both saliva and saline mouth rinse/gargle samples the order of sample collection was alternated sequentially (i.e. saliva first vs mouth rinse/gargle sample first).
    IRB: This project was reviewed by the BC Children’s and Women’s Research Ethics Board and deemed a quality improvement/quality assurance (QI/QA) activity based on completion of the Provincial Health Services Authority Project Sorting Tool.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All testing was done using STATA v16.1 (College Station, TX).
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.