RESULTS
A total of 12 patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection in Hong Kong were included. The median age was 62.5 years, ranging from 37 to 75 years. There were 5 female and 7 male patients. At the time of writing, all patients were still hospitalized. Saliva specimens were collected at a median of 2 days after hospitalization (range, 0–7 days) (Figure 1). The 2019-nCoV was detected in the initial saliva specimens of 11 patients (91.7%). For patient K, the first saliva specimen collected on the day of hospital admission tested negative. The median viral load of the first available saliva specimens was 3.3 × 106 copies/mL (range, 9.9 × 102 to 1.2 × 108 copies/mL).
Figure 1.  Saliva viral load in patients with 2019 novel coronavirus infection. For this figure, specimens with undetected viral load were assigned a value of 101.   Serial saliva specimens were available for 6 patients. The viral load was highest in the earliest available specimens for 5 patients (83.3%). For patient H, the viral load was slightly higher on day 1 after hospitalization (6.8 × 107 copies/mL) than on the day of hospital admission (5.7 × 107 copies/mL). For patient B, viral shedding in saliva was still detected on day 11 after hospitalization. In 33 patients whose nasopharyngeal specimens tested negative for 2019-nCoV, all saliva specimens also tested negative. At the time of writing, viral cultures were positive for 3 patients and negative for 2 patients.