The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented global demand on laboratory supplies required for testing. Sample pooling has been investigated by laboratories as a strategy to preserve testing capacity. We evaluate the performance of Cepheid Xpert® Xpress SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assay for testing samples in pools of 4 and 6. Clinical samples containing SARS-CoV-2, and confirmed negative clinical samples were used to create sample pools. Clinical samples had ‘neat’ Xpert® E gene cycle threshold values ranging between 20 and 28 and all were detected qualitatively when contained in pools of 4 or 6 samples. For these samples, pooling had a median change in cycle threshold value of 2.0 in pools of 4, and of 2.9 in pools of 6. With the use of Cepheid Xpert® Xpress SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assay, pooling of 4 or 6 samples may be an effective strategy to increase testing capacity.

COVID-19大流行对测试所需的实验室用品提出了前所未有的全球需求。实验室已对样品池进行了研究，以此作为保持测试能力的策略。我们评估CepheidXpert®Xpress SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR分析在4和6样品池中测试样品的性能。使用含有SARS-CoV-2的临床样品，并使用阴性临床样品创建样品池。临床样本的“Xpert®E”基因周期“阈值”整齐，介于20到28之间，当包含在4个或6个样本池中时，所有这些样本均被定性检测。对于这些样品，在4个样品池中，池阈值的中值变化为2.0；在6个样品池中，池的阈值变化为2.9。使用CepheidXpert®Xpress SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR分析，