1Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Da Nang, Vietnam.
2Pasteur Institute, Nha Trang, Vietnam.
Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2021 Jan 22;104(4):1531-1534. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.20-1583.
We sampled nasal-pharyngeal throat swabs from 96,123 asymptomatic individuals at risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and generated 22,290 pools at collection, each containing samples from two to seven individuals. We detected SARS-CoV-2 in 24 pools, and confirmed the infection in 32 individuals after resampling and testing of 104 samples from positive pools. We completed the testing within 14 days. We would have required 64 days to complete the screening for the same number of individuals if we had based our testing strategy on individual testing. There was no difference in cycle threshold (Ct) values of pooled and individual samples. Thus, compared with individual sample testing, our approach did not compromise PCR sensitivity, but saved 77% of the resources. The present strategy might be applicable in settings, where there are shortages of reagents and the disease prevalence is low, but the demand for testing is high.
我们从 96123 名有感染 SARS-CoV-2 风险的无症状个体中采集了鼻咽拭子，并在采集时生成了 22290 个样本池，每个样本池包含 2 至 7 个个体的样本。我们在 24 个样本池中检测到了 SARS-CoV-2，并在对阳性样本池中的 104 个样本进行重新采样和检测后，确认了 32 例感染。我们在 14 天内完成了检测。如果我们的检测策略基于个体检测，那么完成相同数量个体的筛查将需要 64 天。样本池和个体样本的 Ct 值没有差异。因此，与个体样本检测相比，我们的方法并未降低 PCR 敏感性，但节省了 77%的资源。在试剂短缺且疾病流行率低但检测需求高的情况下，本策略可能适用。
