Adaptive sample pooling for SARS-CoV-2 testing based on positivity rates spares 76% of test reactions without compromising specificity or sensitivity. Batch testing for SARS-CoV-2 Frequent and accurate RT-PCR–based testing is essential for preventing and managing SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, active infection surveillance is still often limited by time or resources. Cleary et al. demonstrate that considering population-level viral prevalence and individual viral loads allows for efficiency gains upon pooled testing with minimal loss of sensitivity, both theoretically and as validated in vitro using human swab and sputum samples. Barak et al. show that pooled testing of 133,816 hospital-collected patient nasopharyngeal samples eliminated three quarters of testing reactions with only a minor reduction in sensitivity, demonstrating the efficacy of the approach in the field. Both studies suggest that considered pooling of individual samples before testing could reliably increase SARS-CoV-2 testing throughput. Pooling multiple swab samples before RNA extraction and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis has been proposed as a strategy to reduce costs and increase throughput of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) tests. However, reports on practical large-scale group testing for SARS-CoV-2 have been scant. Key open questions concern reduced sensitivity due to sample dilution, the rate of false positives, the actual efficiency (number of tests saved by pooling), and the impact of infection rate in the population on assay performance. Here, we report an analysis of 133,816 samples collected between April and September 2020 and tested by Dorfman pooling for the presence of SARS-CoV-2. We spared 76% of RNA extraction and RT-PCR tests, despite the frequently changing prevalence (0.5 to 6%). We observed pooling efficiency and sensitivity that exceeded theoretical predictions, which resulted from the nonrandom distribution of positive samples in pools. Overall, our findings support the use of pooling for efficient large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing.
【초록키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, Efficacy, coronavirus, Infection, in vitro, RT-PCR, Prevalence, RNA extraction, sensitivity, specificity, Surveillance, SARS-CoV-2 testing, Viral load, Patient, reverse transcription, Swab, infection rate, pooling, distribution, Analysis, False positives, Efficiency, Dilution, Support, RT-PCR tests, acute respiratory syndrome, reaction, sputum samples, positive sample, nasopharyngeal sample, resources, approach, polymerase chain, swab sample, tested, collected, reduced, question, reduction in, exceeded, eliminated, reduce cost, 【제목키워드】 lesson, SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test, applied,