Journal des maladies infectieuses et de la thérapie

Abstrait

Saliva Pcr Testing as a Covid-19 Screening Strategy for Passengers Traveling Remote Islands

Moto Kimura1*,Junko Terada-Hirashima4 , Wataru Sugiura2 , Yosuke Shimizu3 , Yurika Tanaka1 , Yukari Uemura3 , Masahiro Ishikane5 , Yukumasa Kazuyama6 , Masato Ikeda6 , Kazuhiko Wakabayashi7 , Norio Ohmagari

Quarantine of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in remote islands with weak medical systems is an important issue. We evaluated the usefulness of ship pre-boarding saliva polymerase chain reaction as a quarantine tool to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to Chichijima island by people headed to the island, which is far from the Japanese mainland. The infection rate on the island during the study period was 0.015% (2/13,448). Of the 8,910 individuals tested before boarding the ship during this study, 7 people tested positive by saliva PCR and one of them also tested positive by nasopharyngeal swab test. The quarantine strategy implemented in this study can be used as a reference for quarantine strategies in other remote islands with medical depopulation, where outbreaks must never occur