Senators Back Yale’s New Saliva-Based Covid Test

If New Haven schools reopen at some point, the Yale School of Public Health might have a new way to help them test for Covid-19 quicker.

The school developed the new test, called SalivaDirect.

U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal discussed the new saliva-based Covid-19 test at a press conference outside the Yale School of Public Health Tuesday morning.

Yale School of Public Health researchers were granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 15. Saliva samples for the SalivaDirect test can be collected in any sterile container and doesn’t require the special swabs and collection devices needed for nasal or deep throat swabs.

Before the press conference, Yale University School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown and Yale School of Public Health Dean Sten Vermund joined Murphy and Blumenthal for a tour through the new saliva testing laboratory (where press was not allowed).

Blumenthal praised the test’s sensitive and reliable results as well as its low cost.

“This test is potentially a world-shaking, game changing breakthrough because it can reduce the cost, raise reliability, and make detection and screening much faster,” he said.

Because the SalivaDirect uses more simple, off the shelf materials, Blumenthal said each test could cost $10 or even $1. On average, in the United States Covid-19 tests cost between $50 and $200 with the antibody test at around $50 and $100-$200 for a PCR swab test. 

“It’s less invasive, less expressive, much quicker, and potentially scalable for the country as a whole to provide massive screenings in places like schools. Kids going back to school right now could be tested with SalivaDirect in a way that would forward results in hours rather than within days” said Blumenthal.

He touted SalivaDirect as an improvement over the nasal swab and PCR test. He said the challenge is to roll it out and scale it up for the entire country to use: ​“Our job now is to make it available to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”

Blumenthal said his main goal is to help SalivaDirect scale up the test for labs across the country, but he also plans to protect SalivaDirect’s intellectual property. Blumenthal said he wants to prevent medical device companies from profiting and exploiting the test by raising the price and putting it out of reach for schools, essential workers, and sports leagues. 

Murphy emphasized the importance of funding research institutions through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) so that nonprofit research like SalivaDirect can thrive and benefit the public. ​“What is so great about Yale being the originator of this idea is that their interest is solving the pandemic, not making billions of dollars. The researchers and scientists who came up with SalivaDirect are interested in using this technology for the public good, not for private wealth creation,” Murphy said.

Murphy spoke about the simplicity of the test, which will make it more cost effective and accessible to the public. Murphy said on their tour they learned samples can be collected by a professional or can be self collected in an open mouth container, which is then sent off to a lab for analysis. 

Murphy said using open-mouth containers for collection rather than swabs will help eliminate the swab shortages that often make nasal swab testing inefficient. He also said the saliva test is more efficient because it doesn’t require labs to purchase a specific testing kit or specific reagent. 

These inefficiencies from other types of testing explain why the country can’t do broader population testing, according to Murphy. ​“The only way you can beat this virus is to be doing ten to a hundred times more testing than we are today. There’s no way to be able to attack a hotspot if you don’t know the hotspot exists until a month after the virus started spreading again.”

He said the only way to safely reopen the country is with strong population testing.

“That can allow us to reopen our schools and reopen our economy with much more confidence than we can today,” Murphy said.

“Right now, a school that’s opening here in New Haven can’t test its kids. There’s just not enough tests and even if there were, they’re too expensive. Yale has developed a process by which eventually we would be able to test all or a large sample of kids that are showing up in our public school systems and do it at a price that’s affordable.”