Diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection from breath - a proof-of-concept study

Bulemba Katende; Lucia González Fernández; Josephine Muhairwe; Tracy R Glass; Irene Ayakaka; Niklaus D Labhardt; Morten Ruhwald; Margaretha de Vos; Moniek Bresser; Klaus Reither

doi:10.1016/j.ijregi.2022.10.007

Diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection from breath - a proof-of-concept study

IJID Reg. 2022 Dec:5:163-164. doi: 10.1016/j.ijregi.2022.10.007. Epub 2022 Nov 3.

Authors

Bulemba Katende¹, Lucia González Fernández^{2

3

4}, Josephine Muhairwe¹, Tracy R Glass^{3

4}, Irene Ayakaka¹, Niklaus D Labhardt^{3

4

5}, Morten Ruhwald⁶, Margaretha de Vos⁶, Moniek Bresser^{3

4}, Klaus Reither^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ SolidarMed, Partnerships for Health, Maseru, Lesotho.
² SolidarMed, Partnerships for Health, Lucerne, Switzerland.
³ Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland.
⁴ University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
⁵ Department of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
⁶ FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

Bioaerosol capture and analysis is emerging as a non-invasive diagnostic method for the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In this proof-of-concept study conducted in Lesotho, we evaluated the novel and simple AL2 bioaerosol detection device in comparison to conventional nasopharyngeal sampling methods. We demonstrated for the first time that SARS-CoV-2 can be detected using the AL2 bioaerosol capture device. However, studies with a larger sample size are needed to further evaluate this bioaerosol capture device for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: COVID-19; Lesotho; SARS-CoV-2; bioaerosol capture device.