On the eve of the Lunar New Year holidays, China cleared anal swabs as a way to track covid positivity. The news was reported by the state newspaper Global Times, according to which the test was reserved for people residing in areas with confirmed positive cases, and therefore at a higher risk of contagion, as well as for guests of quarantine facilities. Anal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 are not exactly new in the country, but their possible large-scale use is making headlines as China grapples with the worst wave of new infections since last spring.
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Are nose and throat swabs not enough? The idea is that the technique allows to reduce the false negatives, that is the diagnoses of covid that could escape the classic molecular swabs. Li Tongzeng, Associate Director of the Infectious and Respiratory Diseases Department of You’an Hospital in Beijing, has explained to Central Chinese Television that some studies show that the coronavirus survives longer in the anus and feces than it does in the throat and nasal cavity: in the respiratory tract of some patients it may no longer be detectable after 3-5 days. According to this logic, anal swabs could find traces of the virus even after it is no longer detectable in traditional ways.
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if it’s worth it. However, since it is a more invasive system, it is one thing to exploit it to confirm the negativization of certain patients in the process of recovery or involved in scientific studies, as it had been until now, another is to exploit it in people simply at risk of contagion, a caution that many scientists they consider excessive and inappropriate.
It has long been known that SARS-CoV-2 it also multiplies in the intestinal tract, so much so that the analysis of waste water it is used to trace the areas with the highest spread of the virus; but there is not enough evidence that a patient who no longer has traces of the virus in the airways is still contagious, and can transmit it in other ways.
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in alarm. China is in a state of maximum alert for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations which begin on February 12, and which have kicked off a massive screening campaign, especially for those who have returned from abroad (the threat of the “virus imported “is continually agitated by state propaganda). In Beijing, sweep checks began on two million residents after the detection of two cases of “English variant“, while the vaccination campaign continues, which aims to cover 50 million people before the holidays for the new year: it seems a considerable figure but it is less than 4% of the population.
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