Pooling Upper Respiratory Specimens for Rapid Mass Screening of COVID-19 by Real-Time RT-PCR

Emerg Infect Dis. 2020 Oct;26(10):2469-2472. doi: 10.3201/eid2610.201955. Epub 2020 Aug 26.

Abstract

To validate the specimen-pooling strategy for real-time reverse transcription PCR detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, we generated different pools including positive specimens, reflecting the distribution of cycle threshold values at initial diagnosis. Cumulative sensitivities of tested pool sizes suggest pooling of <6 specimens for surveillance by this method.

Keywords: COVID-19; SAR-CoV-2; SARS; SARS-CoV-2; SARS-related coronavirus; South Korea; coronavirus disease; real-time PCR; respiratory infections; reverse transcription PCR; severe acute respiratory syndrome; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; specimen pooling; viruses; zoonoses.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Betacoronavirus / isolation & purification*
  • COVID-19
  • COVID-19 Testing
  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • Clinical Laboratory Techniques / methods*
  • Coronavirus Infections / diagnosis*
  • Humans
  • Mass Screening / methods*
  • Nasopharynx / virology
  • Oropharynx / virology
  • Pandemics
  • Pneumonia, Viral / diagnosis*
  • Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Sensitivity and Specificity