A new research study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research published by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) That gargling may be a viable alternative for nasopharyngeal swabs to detect Corona Virus .
According to a newspaper report time now news The study demonstrated that adopting gargle washing as a method of sample collection could allow for ease of self-collection and could also relieve healthcare workers, and lead to significant cost savings by reducing the need for wipes and personal protective equipment.
The study showed that collecting swabs also has several disadvantages because it requires training, exposes health care workers to aerosols containing viruses and consumes many resources. An alternative sample collection method that can overcome most of these limitations without compromising the test yield is the need of the hour and the study stated that one of these methods is the collection of gargle wash.
The study was conducted at an institute All India For Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi on 50 confirmed patients from COVID-19 The primary objective was to assess the agreement between the nasopharyngeal swab.NPS(And oropharyngeal swab)OPSAs a way to collect respiratory samples to detect corona.
Secondary objective was to measure the level of patient acceptance discomfort for both sampling methods. Swab and gargle samples were taken within 72 hours of their diagnosis.
The study stated that gargling is an “easy procedure” and stated that both nasal and mouth swabs have certain limitations but gargle procedures can be performed by the patients themselves without much training and they may have better patient acceptance.
The study indicated that adopting gargling in collecting samples will translate into significant cost savings as it will reduce not only the need for swabs and personal protective equipment (PPE) But also the need to develop and maintain a special infrastructure for collecting swabs.
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