Massive and rapid COVID-19 testing is feasible by extraction-free SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 infection is widely diagnosed by RT-PCR, but RNA extraction is a bottleneck for fast and cheap diagnosis. Here, the authors develop protocols to perform RT-PCR directly on heat-inactivated subject samples or samples lysed with readily available detergents and benchmark performance against 597 clinically diagnosed patient samples.