Artikel Jurnal
Self‑collected gargle specimen as a patient‑friendly sample collection method for COVID‑19 diagnosis in a population context
Scaling up SARS‑CoV‑2 testing and tracing continues to be plagued with the limitation of the sample
collection method, which requires trained healthcare workers to perform and causes discomfort to
the patients. In response, we assessed the performance and user preference of gargle specimens
for qRT‑PCR‑based detection of SARS‑CoV‑2 in Indonesia. Inpatients who had recently been
diagnosed with COVID‑19 and outpatients who were about to perform qRT‑PCR testing were asked
to provide nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal (NPOP) swabs and self‑collected gargle specimens. We
demonstrated that self‑collected gargle specimens can be an alternative specimen to detect SARS‑
CoV‑2 and the viral RNA remained stable for 31 days at room temperature storage. The developed
method was validated for use on multiple RNA extraction kits and commercially available COVID‑19
RT‑PCR kits. Our developed method achieved a sensitivity of 91.38% when compared to paired NPOP
swab specimens (Ct < 35), with 97.10% of patients preferring the self‑collected gargle method.
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