Testing for COVID-19: Is a throat swab better at detecting Omicron?

Are throat swabs better at detecting the Omicron variant? Some early evidence suggests they are.

When Stephanie Berry woke up Tuesday morning with a headache and a scratchy throat, she quickly reached for one of her at-home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests.

“The kids had rapid tests, so I (took) one up my nose,” the 27-year-old mother of four told Global News. “It came back negative, so I thought, ‘No big deal.'”

But as the day went on, the Kemptville, Ont., resident said she started to feel worse. So she decided to reach for another test.

This time, Berry said, she decided to take a saliva sample after reading about others using the rapid test swabs on their throats and inside their nasal passages.

Berry swirled the swab around each side of her mouth five times. Then she did the same in her nose.

“It came back positive within a minute. It was so fast,” she said. “I am so glad I didn’t go to the store, I could have infected so many people.”

There is early evidence a throat swab could be more effective at detecting the Omicron variant but experts are torn on whether people should be using at-home rapid test kits for that purpose.

A small real-world pre-print study, published Jan. 5, looked at two at-home antigen testing kits, which used nasal swabs, and found they, indeed, “lagged” when it came to detecting some Omicron infections during the early period of disease when compared with PCR saliva tests.