在北京市新型冠狀病毒感染的肺炎疫情防治記者會上, Shi Guoqing, 國家衛生健康委員會專家、中國疾管中心急診中心副主任, 說口咽拭子和鼻咽拭子是兩種方法的全稱. 如果它們以標準方式操作, there is essentially no difference, and they are all for collecting pharyngeal specimens.
The difference is that in order to collect pharyngeal specimens, one is from oral cavity and the other is from nasal cavity, so they are called oropharyngeal swab and nasopharyngeal swab respectively.
In collecting samples of oropharyngeal swabs, the sampler can see the sampled parts, 但可能會引起噁心, 嘔吐和其他反應; When sampling nasopharyngeal swabs, if the operation is standardized, the sampling throat position can not be seen, which mainly depends on hand sensory resistance, with higher technical requirements and less irritation to mucous membranes, but the public’s acceptability is lower.
Because the virus content in pharynx is affected by time and other factors, the positive rate may be affected by oral swabs, but it is not necessary to carry out the two methods together.
Then what’s the difference between the 2 methods?
鼻拭子: Put the swab into the nose and scrape it for sampling, and collect the mucous membrane or dropped tissue cells in the nasal cavity for inspection.
Throat swab: Put the swab into the throat, gently scrape the throat at the bottom of the throat, and collect the mucous membrane or dropped tissue cells of the throat for inspection.
The difference is that when there are different diseases or conditions, there will be different infection conditions or different substances in the samples of nose and throat. 所以, some diseases can be easily detected with nasal swabs and others with throat swabs. After that, the technical principles are basically the same. 然而, COVID-19 pneumonia is a lower respiratory disease, both of which are samples of upper respiratory tract, and there is no obvious difference in theory.