Molecular, antigenic or salivary? Here is the most reliable tampon

The long queues of these days in front of pharmacies and drive-ins testify to the civic sense of most Italians towards themselves and others: the race to swab it is always essential but even more so during the holidays. Now let’s see what types of anti-Covid tampons exist, where they can be done and which are the most reliable.

Molecular test

The most reliable of all, the one with the lowest margin of error is undoubtedly the buffer molecular. To be clear, it is the most annoying because two samples are taken, in the nose and throat, to then be examined through the RT-PCR method and targets the RNA of the virus. “This test has a very high degree of sensitivity and specificity, i.e. it has a high ability to identify virus-positive individuals so that there are as few false positives as possible and an equally high ability to correctly identify those who do not have the disease.“, we read on guide of the National Institute of Health. The result of this swab is obtained on average in three to six hours and should be the first choice in case the first symptoms are already suspected, if you have been in close contact with a positive, in the screening of health professionals, in the subject to contact with fragile people or for entry into closed communities or hospitals. Generally, if you want to make a molecular swab you have to go to an analysis laboratory or to the drive in of the ASL. You can also go to hospitals or private facilities with specialized personnel.

Antigenic (or quick) swabs

An antigenic swab, also known as rapid, looks for the presence of the viral proteins of SARS-Cov-2 in the nasal mucus or in the deep part of the mouth (pharynx). Unlike the molecular nasopharyngeal swab, which searches for the RNA of the virus and requires more time to be processed, its result is fast so much so that the outcome is known already after 15-30 minutes. Unfortunately, however, their reliability is not 100% but you can have false negatives “tbetween 10 and 25%, depending on whether it is carried out by an expert, for example in a pharmacy, or not“- affirms al Courier service Pierangelo Clerici, president of the Italian Clinical Microbiologists Association and of the Italian Federation of Laboratory Scientific Societies. This also means that “do-it-yourself” quick swabs can give incorrect results in one out of four cases “This happens because it is not easy to carry out the oropharyngeal nose sample correctly by yourself which, as we know, must cause some discomfort.“.

Now, however, the latest generation rapid are made with “immunofluorescence with microfluidic reading“and they seem to have almost molecular-like results if performed in the correct way. Rapid swabs are carried out mainly in pharmacies (as we have seen in recent days) but it is also possible to request them in the same structures enabled for molecules.Iss, But, “rapid antigen testing requires confirmation by molecular testing“: in practice, if you are positive for the rapid, you must also perform a molecular for confirmation or not.

Salivary tests

Finally, the salivary tests but they are not recommended because they do not reach “the minimum acceptable levels of sensitivity (ability to identify positives, i.e. patients) and specificity (ability to identify negatives)“. That’s why they are excluded from the valid European tests to obtain the green pass.”The quality of the saliva sample is subject to many variables, for example the time elapsed since food or drink and how the swab was held in the mouth – says Clerici – in general, tests of this type offer less guarantees than those that analyze a nose oropharyngeal sample“.

When you need to make a tampon

Having made this overview, despite the double or triple vaccination, there are three cases in which it is necessary to resort to the help of a tampon to see if one is positive for the disease: close contact with a positive subject; the presence of symptoms that suggest that one may have contracted Covid; prevention, that is when we meet fragile people such as immunosuppressed, cancer patients, transplant patients but also simply to have more certainty and not put the people around us at risk. By now we know that even those vaccinated with two or three doses can become infected but infinitely less than no vax; they can infect, yes, but to an even lesser extent thanks to the antibodies in the vaccine and are about 95% protected from severe disease.

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