Efficient and Practical Sample Pooling High-Throughput PCR Diagnosis of COVID-19

Haran Shani-Narkiss; Omri David Gilday; Nadav Yayon; Itamar Daniel Landau

The need to scale up diagnostic assays for many thousands of patient samples has been addressed with cutting edge molecular tools such as RNA-Seq with multiplex barcoding 1 and serological test might soon be able to test for the immune status of patients. However, these tools may not be readily available to implement in many places, and they often require higher expertise or are less accurate than regular PCR tests commonly used. A simpler way to scale up diagnostic assays can be found in the method of High-Throughput PCR via sample pooling, used in genetic research as a practical way to reduce the cost of large-scale studies 4 .