Lee Hao-Ru, Wang Fang-Yu, Li Jia-Ling, Chou Teh-Ying, Ho Hsiang-Ling
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 201, Section 2, Shipai Road, Taipei 11217, Taiwan.
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 201, Section 2, Shipai Road, Taipei 11217, Taiwan.; Department of Biotechnology and Laboratory Science in Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
J Clin Virol. 2022 Apr;149:105133. doi: 10.1016/j.jcv.2022.105133. Epub 2022 Mar 15.
The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has become a public health crisis of unprecedented proportions. The fast spread of emerging variants increases the needs of rapid diagnostic and screening testing. Sample pooling efficiently expands the testing capacity under limited resources.
We evaluated the performance of sample pooling on the Point-of-Care (POC) Liat® and cobas® 6800 systems and provided real-world experiences for implementing these systems in large-scale screenings.
Positive nasopharyngeal (NP) specimens with Ct values < 25, 25∼30 or > 30 were tested individually and in pools to optimize the POC Liat® and cobas® 6800 systems, which were then implemented in community screenings.
The 5-sample pooling strategy did not affect the positive detection rates on Liat® or cobas® 6800 in samples with Ct values <25 or 25∼30. However, in samples with low viral loads (Ct values >30), five-sample pooling has a higher positive detection rate on POC Liat® (20/20; 100%), compared to cobas® 6800 (9/20; 45%). Five-sample pooled on POC Liat® and two-sample pooled on cobas® 6800 appear to be appropriate for SARS-CoV-2 detection. By implementing the pooling strategies in two large-scale community screenings, 7,606 NP specimens was tested within 36 h; the average turn-around time was 4.8 h for cobas® 6800 and 1.3 h for POC Liat®. Eight positive specimens (0.11%; 8/7,606) were identified, with Ct values ranging from 18.85 to 37.68.
The performance of sample pooling on POC Liat® was demonstrated to be an effective, accurate, and economical approach for large-scale community screenings for COVID-19.
新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）在全球范围内的爆发已成为一场前所未有的公共卫生危机。新出现的变异毒株迅速传播，增加了快速诊断和筛查检测的需求。样本混合在有限资源下有效扩大了检测能力。
我们评估了样本混合在即时检验（POC）Liat® 和 cobas® 6800系统上的性能，并为在大规模筛查中实施这些系统提供了实际经验。
对Ct值<25、25至30或>30的阳性鼻咽（NP）标本进行单独检测和混合检测，以优化POC Liat® 和 cobas® 6800系统，然后在社区筛查中实施。
5样本混合策略对Ct值<25或25至30的样本在Liat® 或cobas® 6800上的阳性检出率没有影响。然而，在病毒载量较低（Ct值>30）的样本中，与cobas® 6800（9/20；45%）相比，5样本混合在POC Liat® 上有更高的阳性检出率（20/20；100%）。POC Liat® 上的5样本混合和cobas® 6800上的2样本混合似乎适合严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）检测。通过在两次大规模社区筛查中实施混合策略，在36小时内检测了7606份NP标本；cobas® 6800的平均周转时间为4.8小时，POC Liat® 为1.3小时。鉴定出8份阳性标本（0.11%；8/7606），Ct值范围为18.85至37.68。
样本混合在POC Liat® 上的性能被证明是一种用于COVID-19大规模社区筛查的有效、准确且经济的方法。
