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

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

• coronavirus disease
• SARS-CoV-2
• severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
• severe acute respiratory syndrome
• SARS
• viruses