Pooling of Nasopharyngeal Swab Samples To Overcome a Global Shortage of Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR COVID-19 Test Kits
Sunil More, Sai Narayanan, Girish Patil, Parna Ghosh, Samuel Pushparaj, Emily Cooper, Jerry W. Ritchey, Vinay K. Cheruvu, Anil Kaul, Akhilesh Ramachandran
Abstract
The global outbreak and rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has created an urgent need for large-scale testing of populations. There is a demand for high-throughput testing protocols that can be used for efficient and rapid testing of clinical specimens. We evaluated a pooled PCR protocol for testing nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs using known positive/negative and untested clinical samples that were assigned to pools of 5 or 10.
Topics & Concepts
PoolingSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)OutbreakCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Protocol (science)VirologyReverse transcription polymerase chain reactionEconomic shortage2019-20 coronavirus outbreakReal-time polymerase chain reactionMedicineBiologyComputer scienceInfectious disease (medical specialty)PathologyGeneGeneticsDiseaseArtificial intelligenceGovernment (linguistics)PhilosophyMessenger RNALinguisticsAlternative medicineSARS-CoV-2 detection and testingBiosensors and Analytical DetectionRespiratory viral infections research