Horizon 1 1 17 ACL : Articles dans des revues avec comité de lecture répertoriées par l'AERES Open Forum Infectious Diseases ofae433 [9 p.] COVID-19 dry saliva spot dry swab resource-limited settings SARS-CoV-2 LAOS 2024 fdi:010091246 ENG Open Forum Infectious Diseases 2328-8957 ISI:001291225000001 8 10.1093/ofid/ofae433 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010091246 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2024-09/010091246.pdf 11 Horizon (IRD) Background Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 circulation is mainly based on real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, which requires laboratory facilities and cold chain for sample transportation. This is difficult to achieve in remote rural areas of resource-limited settings. The use of dried blood spots shipped at room temperature has shown good efficiency for the detection of arboviral RNA. Using a similar approach, we conducted a study at 3 provincial hospitals in Laos to compare the detection of SARS-CoV-2 from neat and dried spot samples.Methods Between January 2022 and March 2023, patients with respiratory symptoms were recruited. Nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs in virus transport medium (VTM), dry swabs, saliva, and dried saliva spotted on filter paper were collected. All samples were tested by SARS-CoV-2 real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction.Results In total, 479 participants were included. The VTM samples tested positive for 288 (60.1%). High positive percent agreements were observed for dry swab (84.8%; 95% CI, 80.2%-88.8%) and saliva (89.2%; 95% CI, 85.1%-92.6%) as compared with VTM. There was a loss of sensitivity when saliva was dried on filter paper (73.6%; 95% CI, 68.1%-78.6%) as compared with saliva. SARS-CoV-2 variant (Delta or Omicron) had no significant impact on the performance of the different sample types.Conclusions Our findings suggest that dry swabs could be a good alternative for sample collection and permit easy shipping at ambient temperature for subsequent viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA purification and molecular investigation. This is a useful tool to consider for a rapid implementation of large-scale surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in remote areas, which could be extrapolated to other respiratory targets during routine surveillance or in the case of a novel emerging pandemic. 052 ; 050 UR190 Laos