Saliva-based Covid-19 tests could have many advantages over current nasal swabs; being potentially cheaper, quicker, easier, and safer for health workers.
Recently returned expat New Zealander Dr Anne Wyllie is a medical microbiologist usually based at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.
She and her colleagues have been working on SalivaDirect, a saliva-based PCR test that got US FDA emergency use authorization in August and has been attracting interest from around the world (including the NBA).
Wyllie has been interested in the role of saliva as a diagnostic tool for the past decade: before the pandemic her research focussed on detecting bacteria linked with pneumonia, but the coronavirus has shifted priorities.
Anne Wyllie Photo: supplied
