Due to the current pandemic, global shortage of reagents has drawn interest in developing alternatives to increase the number coronavirus tests. One such alternative is sample pooling. Here we compared commercial kits that are used in COVID-19 diagnostics, in terms of sensitivity and feasibility for use in pooling. We showed that pooling of up to 60 samples did not affect the efficiency of the kits. Also, the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) is a more suitable target in pooled samples than the Envelope (E) protein. This approach could provide an easy method of screening large number of samples and help adjust different government regulations.

中文翻译：

---

评估用于检测合并样品中SARS-CoV-2的商业qPCR试剂盒

由于当前的大流行，试剂的全球短缺引起了对开发替代品以增加冠状病毒测试数量的兴趣。一种这样的选择是样品池。在这里，我们比较了COVID-19诊断中使用的商业试剂盒的敏感性和在合并中的可行性。我们显示最多收集60个样品不会影响试剂盒的效率。同样，与包膜（E）蛋白相比，RNA依赖性RNA聚合酶（RdRp）在合并样品中更适合作为靶标。这种方法可以提供一种筛选大量样品的简便方法，并有助于调整不同的政府法规。