Robert F. ServiceScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.To the known risk factors for developing severe COVID-19—age, male sex, or any of a series of underlying conditions—a new study adds one more: high levels of the virus in your saliva.
Standard COVID-19 tests sample the nasal passage. But several new tests look for SARS-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus, in saliva, and the new work finds a striking correlation between high virus levels there and later hospitalization or death.