A Comparison of Pharyngeal Swabs and Tracheal Secretions for the Diagnosing of COVID-19
and Michael Pedersen 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The topic of the manuscript is quite interesting, but the data does not really add anything complete new to the literature.
I have outlined a few concerns below:
1.) Have you considered all incidence rates of COVID-19 during the observed time period.
2.) You did not show the sensitivity and specificity rates of both different test methods.
3.) The conclusion itself is very poor.
4.) What do the authors think is the real scientific value of their study?
Author Response
Please see PDF file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Interesting results.
The authors found high agreement between the test results of oropharyngeal swabs and tracheal secretions collected from patients with symptoms of COVID-19 and they did not find associations between the patients with discordant test results except the period of hospitalization (mainly during within the 4th period of the study (December 2nd, 2020 – _March 1st, 2021).
They were unable to explain this finding. This result should me more discussed regarding for example the variant subtypes that were circulating at this moment: it is well described that there are some differences of replication sites regarding the variants and more discussed considering viral load levels (expressed using CTs for example).
Author Response
Please see PDF file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors!
The paper itself does still not have the highest scientific value, but it seems acceptable in the current form.
