We prospectively compared health care worker-collected nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) to self-collected anterior nasal swabs (ANS) and straight saliva for the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in 354 patients. The percent positive agreement between NPS and ANS or saliva was 86.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 76.7 to 92.9%) and 93.8% (95% CI, 86.0 to 97.9%), respectively. The percent negative agreement was 99.6% (95% CI, 98.0 to 100.0%) for NPS versus ANS and 97.8% (95% CI, 95.3 to 99.2%) for NPS versus saliva. More cases were detected by the use of NPS (n = 80) and saliva (n = 81) than by the use of ANS (n = 70), but no single specimen type detected all severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.

In the spring of 2020, a series of reports from Europe and the USA described clusters of children and adolescents presenting with a life-threatening, hyperinflammatory syndrome - called 'multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children' (MIS-C) - that was seemingly linked to prior exposure to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In June 2020, the US National Institutes of Health convened a workshop of immunologists and clinicians to discuss emerging knowledge and identify key questions surrounding MIS-C, with a focus on innate and adaptive immunity, genetics and epigenetics. This Meeting Report describes the main findings from the workshop.