claim: saliva is less sensitive for sars-cov-2 detection in covid-19 patients than nasopharyngeal swabs
evidence_1: saliva is a promising candidate for sars-cov-2 diagnostics because (1) collection is minimally invasive and can reliably be self-administered and (2) saliva has exhibited comparable sensitivity to nasopharyngeal swabs in detection of other respiratory pathogens, including endemic human coronaviruses, in previous studies.", "when we compared sars-cov-2 detection from patient-matched nasopharyngeal and saliva samples, we found that saliva yielded greater detection sensitivity and consistency throughout the course of infection.", 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "taken together, our findings demonstrate that saliva is a viable and more sensitive alternative to nasopharyngeal swabs and could enable at-home self-administered sample collection for accurate large- scale sars-cov-2 testing.", "to validate the use of saliva for sars-cov-2 detection, we tested nasopharyngeal and saliva samples from confirmed covid-19 patients and self-collected samples from healthcare workers on covid-19 wards.")