“It hurts less” than in the nose: a Gironde school is experimenting with saliva tests

“It hurts less than a nose test”Aya, 7, enjoys CM2 at CM2 at Isins, Gironde, where 150 students experimented on Thursday with the first saliva screening test for Kovid-19, which children accepted better than traditional nasopharyngeal tests.

At this school near Bordeaux, nearly 75% of the 203 students volunteered through parental certification, for this new screening method assigned to each class, mainly nursery school students and elementary students. “With saliva testing, parental consent is important because the test is not aggressive.”, Rector of the New Aquitaine Academic Region Anne Bisagni-Four described on the site.

“The goal is to break the transmission chain by finding more”, She says. To date, only 30% of students have been approved for antigen testing by their parents through the nasopharyngeal swab in Gironde, with a positivity rate of 0.07% according to the Rectorate.

For these new tests conducted by Exolab Labs, it takes three to four minutes for a student to collect about 1 milliliter of saliva in a plastic bottle. The pots are then separated in plastic envelopes and then sent to a laboratory where the results are known. “Within a maximum of 24 hours”, Erwan Le Nour, medical biologist, gloves, FFP2 mask and white coat on his back.

“Get more saliva. When you have the maximum, spit until you fill the bottom of the bottle”, CM2 explains to Felix the doctor in class. “The nose test was horrible, unpleasant so I was a little scared at first. There, there was less pain.”, Tells the student after his test.

Of the five divisions of the former Aquitaine, nearly 2,500 saliva tests will be conducted in two days on fifteen selected schools. “For their proximity to the lab” Responsible for screening. The goal is to conduct 16,000 exams a week from mid-March at the Bordeaux Academy, where two classes are currently closed.