Blueprint for a Pop-up SARS-CoV-2 Testing Lab

Jennifer A. Doudna

The standard sample collection kits use COPAN or similar tubes with universal transport medium (UTM) and nasopharyngeal (NP) or oropharyngeal (OP) swabs. NP swabs are preferred because of the higher viral load in collected samples, though both types are accepted as per CDC guidelines. Due to bottlenecks in supply of NP swabs and standard COPAN tubes, we currently use OP swabs in our sample collection kit, as well as shorter COPAN-type tubes that we adapted to our setup by 3D-printing custom inserts to fit our Hamilton Microlab STARlet tube racks (see Supplementary Fig. 1 for details on our Hamilton Microlab STARlet setup for accessioning patient samples). UTM maintains the activity of the virus and stabilizes it during transport. To avoid receiving live virus at the testing site, other research centers transitioning to clinical testing sites have instituted RNA extraction at the medical facility prior to delivery to the testing facility. In our case, our partner health center did not have the capacity to perform pre-testing preparation. To protect our staff from active virus arriving on site, we created our own sample collection kits using DNA/RNA Shield from Zymo Research instead of UTM. These kits are delivered to sample collection sites (the first site being the Tang Center on the UC Berkeley campus). DNA/RNA Shield inactivates viruses and stabilizes nucleic acids for transport at room temperature.