CLEVELAND — Ask anyone who's received a COVID test from a hospital and they'll tell you it's anything but comfortable. Enter SalivaDirect, a new test from Yale researchers that requires a simple spit in a tube.
It's easy, non-invasive, turnaround time is cut to 24 hours and the biggest benefit is it may cost as little as ten bucks, making it easier to test more people, more often.
Click here for more health coverage
"We envision saliva direct to be a screening tool for large return to programs. So whether that's return to work, return to school," says Yale spokesperson Nathan Grubaugh.
The NBA shot half a million bucks into the development and it was tested on some players, coaches and staff before they reported to the bubble in Disney World. They found results nearly matched proven testing methods.
Yale tells me, "This test will be made available to other labs on a non-commercial basis in the near future."
Within weeks, it could be used around the world. It's not so much a product, but a process and will only be available to FDA CLIA approved labs that have the technology, which include our local labs. Cleveland Clinic is considering it, but did their own saliva test study and have some concerns.
"We found a slightly lower viral load in saliva compared to nasal pharyngeal swabs and with lower viral load you start worrying about losing sensitivity," said Dr. Gary Procop, Medical Director and Co-Chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Enterprise Laboratory Stewardship Committee and serves as Director of Molecular Microbiology, Virology, Mycology and Parasitology.
Another concern Dr. Procop has is that the Yale test cut out the nucleic acid extraction piece to speed up the process.
"Whenever you start cutting corners you usually cut a little bit off sensitivity and so we're studying it but we want to make sure that it is of a high enough quality to match the quality of the current test we're offering," Dr. Procop said.
In a statement University Hospitals tells me, "UH has been evaluating the use of saliva as an alternative and convenient sample for our patients. We are reviewing the data coming out of Yale on this test performance and determining if there is a role in our system. We continue to seek approaches to provide convenient and high quality testing for patients in NE Ohio, particularly those that minimize the reliance on the challenges in the supply chain."
The good news, options are expanding, and we will likely see them here eventually. A similar test developed at Rutgers is already being used on major league baseball players every other day. So in just eight months since the pandemic started, we may have a new way to find it and perhaps slow the spread.