ABSTRACT
Background: The global epidemic of COVID-19 has reached an emergency status in the health system, including dentistry. The dentist profession is inseparable from the possibility of direct or indirect contact with microorganisms in the patient's blood or saliva. National and international dental associations, such as Persatuan Dokter Gigi Indonesia and the American Dental Association, have published practice protocols that must be applied by dentists who choose to continue practicing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dentists' knowledge of practice protocols in the current situation is very important, as it enables dentists to take infection control measures against virus transmission in the dental practice environment. Strong knowledge can have a positive impact on the psychological state of dentists, such as by reducing the anxiety level of dentists when treating patients during the pandemic. Purpose: To determine the correlation between the level of knowledge of dentists regarding practice protocols and the level of anxiety that they face regarding practicing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: The widespread of SARS-CoV-2 infection has raised concerns about the potential role of schools in community transmission. In Italy, a national screening test strategy was implemented throughout the 2021-2022 school year to monitor virus circulation in schools. Materials and methods The National Plan for Monitoring the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 virus in primary and secondary schools aims at testing students attending a sample of primary and secondary schools in each Italian Region, by means of molecular salivary testing, every two weeks. We report preliminary data for the period 13/9/2021-13/2/2022 comparing them with the trend of the incidence rate in the Italian population aged 6-13 years. Results A total of 486,206 students from across the country were invited for the screening 273,738 (55.3%) underwent the test and 1086 (0.40%) came back positive. The highest participation rate (> 60%) was recorded on January 2022. Incidence rate was low (< 5 x 10,000 students tested) between September and December 2021, it increased steadily on January 2022 (20.8 x 10,000) and it began to slowly decrease on February 2022. A similar trend was recorded in general population. Of note, a national average of 10% of tests performed on saliva gave indeterminate results. Discussion and conclusions The heterogeneous adherence of Regions to the Plan, the low testing acceptance by students and the high rate of indeterminate results suggest that saliva sampling should be considered carefully when planning a screening campaign in schools. Screening tests in schools emerged as a useful strategy in detecting and contrasting the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but more research is needed on the determinants of student participation and saliva sampling methods.
ABSTRACT
This study compared the test samples with NPS specimens using 3 ml universal transport media (UTM) (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ) with unpreserved saliva collected in the emergency department (ED) and from patients in a COVID-positive hospital unit. The specimens were collected prospectively in the ED, when a patient with suspected COVID-19 was being investigated, following institutional and national guidelines for testing (2) or randomly in the hospital COVID-19 unit from patients not requiring mechanical ventilation. A total of 156 paired NPS and saliva specimens were tested. The overall positivity was 50/156 (32.1%);the average age was 47.8 years old with a male/female (M/F) ratio of 90/66. The community rate of positivity during the week of collection was 11.1% (3). A total of 153/156 samples were in overall agreement. Also, 47/49 samples were positive in saliva compared with the NPS, resulting in a positive percent agreement of 96% (95% CI, 86.02% to 99.5%). A total of 105/106 samples had a negative saliva and NPS result. A single sample demonstrated detectable levels of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid in the saliva, but the NPS was negative (1/106), resulting in a negative percent agreement of 99%. Thus, saliva is an acceptable alternative source for detecting SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids. Another advantage to saliva versus NPS is that the process to collect saliva is noninvasive, and a patient, with education and coaching, could self-collect the specimen. These differences could reduce the risk to health care workers, decrease personal protective equipment usage, and provide less discomfort to patients during collection. Furthermore, an important preanalytical variable for SARS-CoV-2 testing is proper nasopharyngeal collection which may have been a contributing factor for the discrepant saliva positive/nasopharyngeal swab negative sample. Because saliva has excellent agreement with NPS in UTM, saliva could potentially be used for the diagnosis of COVID-19 in symptomatic patients using the Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2 PCR test.