AUTHOR=Mandhan Prerna , Sharma Mansi , Pandey Sushmita , Chandel Neha , Chourasia Nidhi , Moun Amit , Sharma Divyani , Sukar Rubee , Singh Niyati , Mathur Shubhangi , Kotnala Aarti , Negi Neetu , Gupta Ashish , Kumar Anuj , Suresh Kumar R. , Kumar Pramod , Singh Shalini 

TITLE=A Regional Pooling Intervention in a High-Throughput COVID-19 Diagnostic Laboratory to Enhance Throughput, Save Resources and Time Over a Period of 6 Months

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.858555

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2022.858555

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=An effective and rapid diagnosis has great importance in tackling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic through isolation of the infected individuals to curb the transmission and initiation of specialized treatment for the disease. It has been proven that enhanced testing capacities contribute to efficiently curbing SARS-CoV-2 transmission during the initial phases of the outbreaks. RT-qPCR is considered a gold standard for the diagnosis of COVID-19. However, in resource-limited countries expenses of molecular diagnosis limits the diagnostic capacities. Here, we present interventions of two pooling strategies as 5 sample pooling (P-5) and 10 sample pooling (P-10) in a high-throughput COVID-19 diagnostic laboratory to enhance throughput, save resources and time over a period of 6 months. The diagnostic capacity was scaled-up 2.15 folds in P-5 and 1.8 folds in P-10, reagents (toward RNA extraction and RT-qPCR) were preserved 75.24% in P-5 and 86.21% in P-10, and time saved was 6,290.93 hours in P-5 and 3147.3 hours in P-10.