Pooled RNA extraction and PCR assay for efficient SARS-CoV-2 detection

Roni Ben-Ami; Agnes Klochendler; Matan Seidel; Tal Sido; Ori Gurel-Gurevich; Moran Yassour; Eran Meshorer; Gil Benedek; Irit Fogel; Esther Oiknine-Djian; Asaf Gertler; Zeev Rotstein; Bruno Lavi; Yuval Dor; Dana G Wolf; Maayan Salton; Yotam Drier

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04. 17.20069062 doi: medRxiv preprint scale pooling and non-PCR-based methods, we maintain comparable sensitivity, and therefore the method complies with current clinical requirements. The simplicity of the method, similarity to currently approved procedures, and the fact that we do not require special sample handling or additional information make it easily adoptable on a large scale. We offer two such pooling approaches, based either on simple (Dorfman) pooling or matrix pooling [20, 21] , and demonstrate their efficiency and sensitivity in the daily reality of SARS-CoV-2infected clinical cases. Under current clinical diagnosis parameters these methods allow 5-fold to 7.5-fold increase in throughput when applied to populations with < 1% positives, including screened asymptomatic healthcare personnel and essential industries' employees.