Comparison of Nasopharyngeal and Oropharyngeal Swabs for the Diagnosis of Eight Respiratory Viruses by Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR Assays

Many acute respiratory illness surveillance systems collect and test nasopharyngeal (NP) and/or oropharyngeal (OP) swab specimens, yet there are few studies assessing the relative measures of performance for NP versus OP specimens.