Over the course of the pandemic, new variants and sub-lineage variants have been discovered, in addition to being stealth and harder to detect with nasal swabs, like Omicron or BA.2. In China, a new kind of tests is used for months to try and detect these new variants more effectively: anal swab.
Is it really more accurate? Chinese have been practicing the “zero covid” policy and therefore deployed anal swabs when an Omicron variant cluster was found in Beijing, shortly before the beginning of the Olympics. The goal is to spot asymptomatic or mild Covid-19 quickly, anal swabs being renown as more effective.
As a matter of fact, it is possible than after several days without any symptom, the virus is no longer found in the nose or throat. But, Covid tends to survive much longer in the alimentary canal. The anal swab is said to enable to spot variants longer than the other tests and therefore prevent contaminations when the patient is still contagious. Yet, to date, anal swabs are not popular outside China and not used in Europe.
BA.2: What do we know about Omicron stealth sub-lineage variant already spreading in France?
A new Omicron sub-lineage variant, called BA.2, has broken out in the world over the past few days. About twenty cases have been reported in France already. [Read more]
BA.2: What do we know about Omicron stealth sub-lineage variant already spreading in France?
