COVID-19 Sample Pooling: From RNA Extraction to Quantitative Real-time RT-PCR

Area of Science:

• Infectious Diseases
• Virology
• Public Health

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates widespread screening for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
• Individual testing of large populations is resource-intensive and costly.
• Sample pooling offers an efficient alternative for mass screening, reducing reagent consumption and increasing testing capacity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a simple and reliable sample pooling strategy for COVID-19 testing.
• To evaluate the feasibility of pooling clinical nasopharyngeal (NP) and/or oropharyngeal (OP) swabs.
• To provide a resource-efficient method suitable for under-developed regions.

Main Methods:

• Development of a pooling strategy involving 10 NP/OP swabs per pool.
• Extraction of nucleic acids from pooled samples.
• Detection of SARS-CoV-2 using quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR).

Main Results:

• The proposed strategy enables efficient mass screening for COVID-19.
• Pooling reduces the number of tests and reagents required.
• The method is adaptable for screening other pathogens.

Conclusions:

• Sample pooling is a viable and economical approach for large-scale COVID-19 surveillance.
• This strategy can significantly improve testing efficiency, especially in resource-limited settings.
• The methodology can be extended to detect other infectious agents.