Sample pooling, a population screening strategy for SARS-CoV2 to prevent future outbreak and mitigate the “second-wave” of infection of the virus

  1. S. Sawarkar
  2. A. Victor
  3. M. Viotti
  4. S. Haran
  5. S. Verma
  6. D. Griffin
  7. J. Sams

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Abstract

How do we manage treatment and stabilization in clinical settings and static population communities like assisted living facility settings of their patient or resident populations during and post the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic?

Scope

This proposal explores the possible and predicted changes to standard operating procedures to the facility management and associated landscape and focuses on series of deployments, during and post peak SARS-CoV-2 activity, and will outline possible models for the current medical facility model that we operate with. This article primarily focuses on non-emergency facility management.

Assumptions and understanding of the field

With a reduction in the numbers nationally, patients are highly motivated and likely to seek non-emergency and planned medical procedural treatment as early as possible as social distancing measures are eased and restrictions on non-urgent procedures are lifted.

Conclusions and next steps

An initial pan-national shutdown and suspension of services was necessary in an effort to ensure that essential medical services and resources were not strained. The authors feel that a strategic resumption of regular non-emergency treatments around the United States and continued provision of services at care facilities is possible with innovative testing strategies like pooled screening of large populations at a manageable price point. Moreover, pooling as a strategy when used widely, would be extremely effective at predicting outbreaks of the virus and as an effect help in mitigating the spread of the virus in its “second-wave”. We have developed one such innovative pooling strategy that can be easily deployed across laboratories and reduce the cost of population wide COVID-19 testing significantly

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.29.20204974: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Human and SARS-Cov2 RNA isolation: This study was waived from the review by the Zouves Foundation Institutional Review Board (OHRP
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The real time PCR reactions were performed on the QuantStudio3 and Ct values for each sample was calculated using Thermo Fisher Connect Design and Analysis 2 software.
    Thermo Fisher Connect
    suggested: None
    Data representation and analysis: The Ct values form the real time PCR experiments were plotted using Excel 2016 (Microsoft office).
    Excel
    suggested: None

    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.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.29.20204974 on medRxiv