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• The rapid global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused significant health and socioeconomic burden on affected countries.

• As positive cases continued to rise in Malaysia, public health laboratories experienced an overwhelming demand for COVID-19 screening.

• The confirmation of positive cases of COVID-19 has solely been based on the detection of the virus using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).

• A real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay was developed to rapidly detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome–associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

• The assay, based on multiple primer and probe sets located in different regions of the SARS-CoV genome, could discriminate SARS-CoV from other human and animal coronaviruses

• In efforts to increase the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of COVID-19 screening, the study evaluated the feasibility of pooling clinical swab specimens during nucleic acid extraction without a reduction in sensitivity of qRT-PCR.

• Pools of 10 specimens were extracted and subsequently tested by qRT-PCR according to the WHO-Charité protocol.

• The study demonstrated that the sample pooling method showed no loss of sensitivity.

• The effectiveness of the pooled testing strategy was evaluated on both retrospective and prospective samples, and the results showed a similar detection sensitivity compared to testing individual sample alone.

• This study demonstrates the convenience of using a pooled testing strategy to increase testing capacity and conserve resources, especially when there is a high demand for disease testing.

Sources:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238417

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322901

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