Self- or caregiver swabs are as effective as healthcare worker swabs for detecting pathogens Self swabs and caregiver swabs are effective at detecting multiple pathogens and are just as accurate as those taken by healthcare workers, according to a team of Australian researchers. The research appears in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. Across the range of pathogens and swab types, there was high agreement between results from self- or caregiver swabs and those performed by a healthcare worker, even when different sites were swabbed (e.g. nasopharyngeal vs. nasal)." Joshua Osowicki, BMedSci, MBBS, FRACP, Principal Investigator, Pediatric Infectious Diseases Physician in the Murdoch Children's Research Institute's Tropical Diseases Research Group