Efficient high throughput SARS-CoV-2 testing to detect asymptomatic carriers

Noam Shental; Shlomia Levy; Shosh Skorniakov; Vered Wuvshet; Yonat Shemer-Avni; Angel Porgador; Tomer Hertz

Pools were prepared using a liquid handling robot (Arise EZMATE-601) using a code written in Python. The code automatically generates a command file for the robot to use. Samples were manually pipetted into 96 well plates from which the robot assembled a set of 48 pools, each containing 48 distinct samples. We generated 48 pools for each sample set. Each pool contained equal volumes from 48 samples (11µl /sample, 528µl per pool). Each individual sample was represented in six different pools. Analogously to single samples, 350µl from each pool were then used for nucleic acid extraction into a volume of 100µl, using the clinically approved STARMag kit and the STARlet robot. Then, 8µl were used for qRT-PCR to detect the E gene of SARS-CoV-2, based on a method that was clinically validated and employed in the SUMC-clinical virology laboratory prior to the introduction of the 2019-nCoV SeeGene kit. We used this PCR method due . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.