Canada Announces “Gargle And Spit” Covid-19 Test

Topline

As Canadians struggle with excessively long wait times for high-demand Covid-19 tests, officials released a new coronavirus test for school children that gets rid of the invasive nasal swab and instead asks kids to gargle and spit.

Key Facts

Surprising Fact

A similar gargle test studied at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany in July was successful in detecting small amounts of the coronavirus using mass spectrometry, especially in the early stages of the disease. The test, researchers said, takes about 15 minutes.

Tangent

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use approval last month for a five dollar credit card sized, rapid-response Covid-19 test made by Abbott Laboratories, which could help to meet the need to ramp up testing to contain the disease in the U.S.

Key Background

Processing the massive influx of coronavirus has been a problem since the beginning of the pandemic. In July, a vice president of one of the largest laboratory companies in the U.S., Quest Diagnostics, said it would be impossible to keep up with Covid-19 testing demands once flu season hit in the fall. There have been reported backlogs in test processing from the U.K. to India to the U.S.  Health experts have said increased testing is one of the best ways to ensure the virus is contained.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus