“…Reverse‐transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) has been the major tool for SARS‐CoV‐2 detection that identifies the viral RNA, primarily because it is minimally invasive and has a rapid turn‐around time (Corman et al, 2020 ; Freire‐Paspuel & Garcia‐Bereguiain, 2021 ; Studdert & Hall, 2020 ). While nasopharyngeal swab is the preferred sample collection method, (Basu et al, 2020 ; Pascarella et al, 2020 ), SARS‐CoV‐2 can also be detected from saliva (Costa et al, 2022 ; Hernandez et al, 2021 ; Takeuchi et al, 2020 ), sputum (Bezstarosti et al, 2021 ), gargle (Chivte et al, 2021 ; Ihling et al, 2020 ; Iles et al, 2020 ), blood (Li, Liu, et al, 2021 ; Peng et al, 2020 ), plasma (Lazari et al, 2021 ), serum (Shen et al, 2020 ; Yan et al, 2021 ), urine (Chavan et al, 2021 ; Peng et al, 2020 ), feces (Li, Liu, et al, 2021 ; Wang, Xu, et al, 2020 ) and breath (Ruszkiewicz et al, 2020 ; Steppert et al, 2021 ) samples. RT‐PCR lacks information on the infectious nature and host–pathogen interactions and cannot distinguish between viable and nonviable virus (Y. Chen et al, 2022 ; Healy et al, 2021 ).…”