Blueprint for a Pop-up SARS-CoV-2 Testing Lab

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Abstract

The appearance and spread of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) led to the official declaration of a global pandemic, with states in the US implementing shelter-in-place orders at an unprecedented scale. SARS-CoV-2 has a robust person-to-person transmission rate and an asymptomatic period of two weeks or more, leading to widespread infection that has overwhelmed healthcare infrastructures around the globe. Effective public health measures require extensive, accurate, and rapid testing to determine infection rates. Here we describe the strategy we used to establish a CLIA-licensed clinical laboratory to perform a validated Laboratory-Developed Test (LDT) for SARS-CoV-2 in Berkeley, California and the surrounding Bay Area community. Our procedures for implementing the technical, regulatory, and data management workstreams necessary for clinical sample processing provide a roadmap to aid others in setting up similar testing centers.

Note on Nomenclature

in accordance with established virology and infectious disease nomenclature, throughout this document we use “SARS-CoV-2” to refer to the viral agent causing infection and “COVID-19” to refer to the human infectious disease caused by that viral agent .

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.11.20061424: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: While Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is required for any research using human subjects, clinical laboratory activities exclusively supporting CLIA-certified clinical operations do not.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.