Performance Validation of COVID-19 Self-Conduct Buccal and Nasal Swabs RTK-Antigen Diagnostic Kit

The antigen rapid diagnostic test (Ag-RDT) is an immunodiagnostic test that detects the presence of viral proteins (antigens) expressed by the COVID-19 virus in a sample from a patient's respiratory tract. This study focused on evaluating the performance of self-conduct buccal and nasal swabs RTK-antigen test compared to nasopharyngeal swab RTK-based COVID-19 diagnostic assays, Panbio™ COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test Device (Nasopharyngeal) (Abbott Rapid Diagnostics Jena GmbH, Jena, Germany) used in hospitals for first-line screening. The sensitivity and specificity of the paired RTK-Ag test in detecting the an-tigen were calculated at 96.4% and 100%, respectively. Fisher exact tests showed the association between nasopharyngeal swabs RTK-Ag assay and buccal-nasal swabs RTK-Ag from ProdetectTM is significant (p-values < 0.001). The result showed that a self-conducted buccal and nasal RTK-antigen rapid test by the patients is comparable to the results obtained from a rapid test device conducted by trained medical personnel using a nasopharyngeal swab.