Comparison of SARS‐CoV‐2 detection with the Cobas® 6800/8800 system on gargle samples using two sample processing methods with combined oropharyngeal/nasopharyngeal swab
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Gargle samples have been proposed as a noninvasive method for detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA. The clinical performance of gargle specimens diluted in Cobas® PCR Media and in Cobas® Omni Lysis Reagent was compared to oropharyngeal/nasopharyngeal swab (ONPS) for the detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA. Study Design Participants were recruited prospectively in two COVID‐19 screening clinics. In addition to the ONPS, participants gargled with 5 ml of natural spring water split in the laboratory as follows: 1 ml was added to 4.3 ml of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) media and 400 μl was added to 200 μl of lysis buffer. Testing was performed with the Cobas® SARS‐CoV‐2 test on the Cobas® 6800 or 8800 platforms. Results Overall, 134/647 (20.7%) participants were considered infected because the ONPS or at least one gargle test was positive. ONPS had, respectively, a sensitivity of 96.3% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 91.3–98.5); both gargle processing methods were slightly less but equally sensitive (90.3% [95% CI: 83.9–94.3]). When ONPS and gargle specimens were both positive, the mean cycle threshold ( C t ) was significantly higher for gargles, suggesting lower viral loads. Conclusion Gargle specimens directly added in PCR Media provide a similar clinical sensitivity to chemical lysis, both having a slightly, not significantly, lower sensitivity to ONPS.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".