{"doi":"10.1101/2022.03.07.22270699","title":"Adequacy of Nasal Self-Swabbing for SARS-CoV-2 Testing in Children","abstract":"ABSTRACT Background The goal of this study was to characterize the ability of school-aged children to self-collect adequate anterior nares (AN) swabs for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing. Methods From July to August 2021, 287 children, age 4-14 years-old, were prospectively enrolled in the Atlanta area. Symptomatic (n=197) and asymptomatic (n=90) children watched a short instructional video before providing a self-collected AN specimen. Health care workers (HCWs) then collected a second specimen, and useability was assessed by the child and HCW. Swabs were tested side-by-side for SARS-CoV-2. RNase P RNA detection was investigated as a measure of specimen adequacy. Results Among symptomatic children, 87/196 (44.4%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by both self- and HCW-swab. Two children each were positive by self- or HCW-swab; one child had an invalid HCW-swab. Compared to HCW-swabs, self-collected swabs had 97.8% and 98.1% positive and negative percent agreements, respectively, and SARS-CoV-2 Ct values did not differ significantly between groups. Participants ≤8 years-old were less likely than those >8 to be rated as correctly completing self-collection, but SARS-CoV-2 detection did not differ. Based on RNase P RNA detection, 270/287 children (94.1%) provided adequate self-swabs versus 277/287 (96.5%) HCW-swabs (p=0.24) with no difference when stratified by age. Conclusions Children, aged 4-14 years-old, can provide adequate AN specimens for SARS-CoV-2 detection when presented with age-appropriate instructional material, consisting of a video and a handout, at a single timepoint. These data support the use of self-collected AN swabs among school-age children for SARS-CoV-2 testing.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":298588,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9567,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":277466,"name":"Miriam B. Vos","orcid":"0000-0002-0817-7068","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":646959,"name":"Erika A. 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