Reply to Fabbris et al. A Viable Alternative. Comment on "Kohmer et al. Self-Collected Samples to Detect SARS-CoV-2: Direct Comparison of Saliva, Tongue Swab, Nasal Swab, Chewed Cotton Pads and Gargle Lavage. J. Clin. Med. 2021, 10, 5751".

We thank Fabbris et al. for their remarks [...].

We thank Fabbris et al. for their remarks [1] on our publication “Self-Collected Samples to Detect SARS-CoV-2: Direct Comparison of Saliva, Tongue Swab, Nasal Swab, Chewed Cotton Pads and Gargle Lavage” [2].

We agree that nasal wash or nasopharyngeal aspirate, which has previously been demonstrated to be useful when testing for different viruses, Ref. [3] may also be an interesting candidate to test for SARS-CoV-2 in a self-collected environment.

In our study, we limited the number of different collection techniques to avoid overwhelming the study participants with a multitude of samples collected without supervision by a medical professional, and due to potential interference between different specimens.

Our study was designed to assess the diagnostic sensitivity of self-collected specimens. Therefore, we recruited patients who were known to be infected with SARS-CoV-2. This prohibited us from determining the specificity of the materials examined in our study.