PUTRAJAYA, 18 Feb (NNN-Bernama) \u2014Deep throat saliva samples will soon be used by some government hospitals for COVID-19 tests, said Health Minister Adham Baba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that on an evaluation by the Institute for Medical Research (IMR), deep throat saliva has a sensitivity of 96.67 percent and 100 percent specificity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the sampling method is safe and non-invasive compared to sampling with the \u2018nasopharyngeal\u2019 and the \u2018oropharyngeal\u2019 swab through the nose and mouth, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Health Ministry (MOH)has received approval in principle from IMR to use the saliva sampling method at government hospitals first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Sampling of COVID-19 through saliva will also speed up and increases COVID-19 screenings,” he told reporters after receiving 2.7 million low dead-volume syringes, worth RM891,000, from Etiqa Family Takaful Berhad at his ministry here Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Adham said the sampling method using saliva is self-collected and this is expected to save on the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Patients will be asked to remove their own saliva into a specimen cup and the cup will then be sent to the laboratory for testing,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the saliva sampling method is also suitable for the COVID 19 real-time reverse transcriptase-PCR’ (RT-PCR) test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Currently, IMR is completing a study on the use of saliva samples for RTK antigen (RTK Ag) tests,” he said, adding that sampling through the nose and mouth is still used to detect COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the use of saliva samples for the COVID-19 test has been conducted in several countries and it has proven to be cheaper and one of the most consistent sample collection methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 NNN-BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PUTRAJAYA, 18 Feb (NNN-Bernama) \u2014Deep throat saliva samples will soon be used by some government hospitals for COVID-19 tests, said Health Minister Adham Baba. He said that on an evaluation by the Institute for Medical Research (IMR), deep throat saliva has a sensitivity of 96.67 percent and 100 percent specificity. In addition, the sampling method […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":110258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288,198],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114063"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/110258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}