Development and evaluation of a flocked nasal midturbinate swab for self-collection in respiratory virus infection diagnostic testing.

We developed and evaluated flocked nasal midturbinate swabs obtained from 55 asymptomatic and 108 symptomatic volunteers. Self-collected swabs obtained from asymptomatic volunteers yielded numbers of respiratory epithelial cells comparable to those of staff-collected nasal (n = 55) or nasopharyngeal (n = 20) swabs. Specific viruses were detected in swabs self-collected by 42/108 (38.9%) symptomatic volunteers by multiplex PCR.