Poor Oral Care May Affect the Accuracy of COVID-19 Tests

Failing to maintain good oral hygiene may result in clinically recovered COVID-19 patients continuing to test positive for the novel coronavirus for longer periods of time, according to a study published on July 24 in Special Care in Dentistry.

Patients who didn’t brush or rinse their teeth may have allowed noninfectious viral nucleic acid to build up, resulting in prolonged viral shedding. On average, those who didn’t keep their oral cavities clean continued to shed the virus for an additional two weeks and resulted in more positive real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, the authors wrote.

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