What Does it Take to confidently Return to the Classroom?
Just like in the school…
How You Test Makes a Big Difference
It’s not a stretch to say the impact of this COVID-19 pandemic has left a lasting effect on us all. The challenge to adjust to new modes of learning and business has not only bore innovative solutions and industry-wide cooperation but a flood of ever-changing COVID-19 information. When faced with the complex decision about how to safely transition back to in-person learning understanding the facts delivers the best, informed solutions.
While vaccination of teachers and staff marks an important step in enabling safe in-person education, the role of testing remains critical, especially given that most K–12 students continue to be ineligible for vaccination. In addition, for those vaccinated, repeat viral exposure has been shown to reduce antibody protection.
Introducing systematic, noninvasive, pain-free, and accurate PCR testing can enable schools to very early identify positive cases (even in those not feeling or displaying symptoms) protecting students, teachers, and staff against additional viral complications we know of as well as the ones we don’t yet.
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Testing Facts
The Best Decisions,
Start With Accurate Information.
Best practices highlight the use of PCR testing, using the non-invasive self-collection of saliva. To date, PCR testing is still considered the “gold standard” being a more sensitive, accurate, and reliable diagnostic test compared to the rapid antigen lateral flow tests (LFT) that may take only minutes for results but continue to deliver unexpectedly high rates of both false-negative and false-positives.
Early detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical to reducing the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of COVID-19. Saliva-based PCR testing is able to accurately detect the presence of COVID-19 days before symptoms appear due to the extraction and amplification process with results in under 24 hours. Spectrum’s highly sensitive formulation is able to detect infections from saliva samples measuring as low as 200 copies/ml compared to rapid antigen LFT requiring a minimum of 10,000-20,000 copies/ml. In addition, when compared to traditional swab PCR tests SARS-CoV-2 RNA first appears in saliva and then later in nasal-swab samples. A high-sensitivity (limit of detection of ∼10 3 copies/mL) RNA test detected SARS-CoV-2 virus in saliva 1.5 to 4.5 days before the viral load in the paired nasal-swab samples.(1)