FDA Approves New Saliva-Based COVID-19 Test

SalivaDirect, an open-source protocol, avoids many of the supply bottlenecks of other tools and could be offered for as little as $10 a test.

Written byAmanda Heidt

| 3 min read

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COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, pandemic, coronavirus, saliva, testing, PCR, FDA, emergency use authorization

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The US Food and Drug Administration has given Emergency Use Authorization to a fifth saliva-based test for COVID-19. The low-cost and noninvasive procedure developed by the Yale School of Public Health requires minimal processing and retains much of the accuracy of traditional nasopharyngeal swabs.

The United States has struggled to implement consistent and widespread testing throughout the pandemic, making it difficult for public health officials to track the spread of the virus. In addition, the equipment and reagents needed to carry out PCR tests have frequently run low, from the swabs needed to collect the sample to the reagents that extract viral RNA.

In a recent paper, published August 4 on the preprint server medRxiv, a team led by Yale postdoc Chantal Vogels detailed the new tool called SalivaDirect. A team composed of many of the same researchers had previously shown that saliva could be collected ...

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Meet the Author

Amanda Heidt
Amanda first began dabbling in scicom as a master’s student studying marine science at Moss Landing Marine Labs, where she edited the student blog and interned at a local NPR station. She enjoyed that process of demystifying science so much that after receiving her degree in 2019, she went straight into a second master’s program in science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Formerly an intern at The Scientist, Amanda joined the team as a staff reporter and editor in 2021 and oversaw the publication’s internship program, assigned and edited the Foundations, Scientist to Watch, and Short Lit columns, and contributed original reporting across the publication. Amanda’s stories often focus on issues of equity and representation in academia, and she brings this same commitment to DEI to the Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains and to the board of the National Association of Science Writers, which she has served on since 2022. She is currently based in the outdoor playground that is Moab, Utah. Read more of her work at www.amandaheidt.com.
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