Travel Advisory: Be Prepared for a COVID-19 Anal Test if Traveling to China

In China, a new COVID-19 anal test is now considered more reliable than the regular tests in use by most countries at the moment. And as a result from now on, travelers to China will have to undergo a rectal examination.

Coronavirus Travel

If you thought that those painful nasal and throat swabs to detect the possible presence of coronavirus, were bad think again because in China the anal test may become the norm.

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Although this new anal test is more effective, it is not generalized to the entire population but is only applied to high-risk individuals and travelers from abroad, who are also subject to mandatory quarantine in hotels.

Rectal screening “increases the detection rate of infected people” because the coronavirus lingers longer in the anus than in the respiratory tract, Dr. Li Tongzeng of You’an Hospital in Beijing told CCTV.

The systematic use of this new method is motivated by the results of a study in China published in August 2020 that said the COVOD-19 rectal tests are the best way to screen patients before they are discharged from the hospital, avoiding the risk of false-negative results.  Still, rest assured that the effectiveness of traditional PCR testing is not in question.

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References

China starts using anal swabs to test ‘high-risk’ people for Covid