Voon Kenny, Johari Nur Alia, Lim Khai Lone, Wong Siew Tung, Khaw Loke Tim, Wong Shew Fung, Chan Elaine W L, Chan Kok Keong, Tan Boon Keat, Ramzi Nurul Hanis, Lim Patricia K C, Sulaiman Lokman H
Pathology Division, School of Medicine, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Institute for Research, Development and Innovation (IRDI), International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Bio Protoc. 2021 May 5;11(9):e4005. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.4005.
The COVID-19 pandemic requires mass screening to identify those infected for isolation and quarantine. Individually screening large populations for the novel pathogen, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is costly and requires a lot of resources. Sample pooling methods improve the efficiency of mass screening and consume less reagents by increasing the capacity of testing and reducing the number of experiments performed, and are therefore especially suitable for under-developed countries with limited resources. Here, we propose a simple, reliable pooling strategy for COVID-19 testing using clinical nasopharyngeal (NP) and/or oropharyngeal (OP) swabs. The strategy includes the pooling of 10 NP/OP swabs for extraction and subsequent testing via quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), and may also be applied to the screening of other pathogens.
新冠疫情需要进行大规模筛查，以识别感染者并进行隔离。针对新型病原体严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）对大量人群进行逐个筛查成本高昂且需要大量资源。样本混合方法通过提高检测能力和减少实验次数来提高大规模筛查的效率，并减少试剂消耗，因此特别适用于资源有限的欠发达国家。在此，我们提出一种简单、可靠的新冠病毒检测混合策略，使用临床鼻咽（NP）和/或口咽（OP）拭子。该策略包括将10个NP/OP拭子混合进行提取，随后通过定量实时逆转录聚合酶链反应（RT-qPCR）进行检测，该策略也可应用于其他病原体的筛查。
