JERUSALEM (Reuters) – People self-testing for COVID-19 should swab their throat as well as their nose when using rapid antigen kits to increase the chances of detecting the Omicron variant, a top Israeli health official said on Monday.
The recommendation goes against the advice of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has said manufacturers’ instructions should still be followed and that any incorrect use of throat swabs could pose a safety risk.
On Israeli Army Radio, Sharon Alroy-Preis, Israel’s public health chief, said antigen tests, used widely in the country, are less sensitive than PCR tests in detecting illness.
“In order to increase their sensitivity we will from now on recommend swabbing the throat and the nose. It’s not what the manufacturer instructs but we are instructing this,” she said.
The Health Ministry did not immediately respond when asked if it has checked throat swabs using nasal test kits work and whether it has sought advice from the manufacturers.
With Omicron pushing daily infection cases to record highs, Israel’s testing centres have been struggling, prompting health officials to prioritise risk groups for PCR testing and trust younger, vaccinated people to test at home if exposed to a carrier.
MORE THAN ONE TEST
Alroy-Preis said that when exposed to a carrier, people should take more than one test or at least wait three days since exposure before testing with rapid kits.
Some infectious disease experts have advocated throat swabbing with antigen tests because people can already transmit Omicron to others when it has infected their throat and saliva but before the virus reaches their nose.
A study released on Wednesday on medRxiv before peer review looked at 29 Omicron-infected workers in high-risk professions who had PCR and antigen tests done simultaneously on multiple days. The PCR tests of saliva detected the virus on average three days before rapid nose-swab samples became positive.
But the FDA tweeted on Friday: “when it comes to at-home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests, those swabs are for your nose and not your throat”.
Throat swabs, it said, “if used incorrectly, can cause harm to the patient”.
Israel has confirmed around 1.5 million infections since the pandemic began and more than 8,000 deaths. Around 60% of its 9.4 million population is fully vaccinated, Health Ministry data shows.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller, Jo Mason and Hugh Lawson)
