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Volume 27, Number 1—January 2021
Research

Performance of Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests for Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Prospectively Pooled Specimens

Hannah Wang, Catherine A. Hogan, Jacob A. Miller, Malaya K. Sahoo, ChunHong Huang, Kenji O. Mfuh, Mamdouh Sibai, James Zehnder, Brendan Hickey, Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong, and Benjamin A. PinskyComments to Author 
Author affiliations: Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA (H. Wang, C.A. Hogan, J.A. Miller, M.K. Sahoo, C. Huang, J. Zehnder, N. Sinnott-Armstrong, B.A. Pinsky); Stanford Health Care, Stanford (K.O. Mfuh, M. Sibai, B.A. Pinsky); Stanford University, Stanford (N. Sinnott-Armstrong)

Main Article

Table 2

Proportion of tests positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 with median Ct values in pooled testing and laboratorywide clinical testing datasets, subset by testing indication*

Dataset No. positive samples/no. total samples (%)
 Median Ct value (IQR)
All First Follow-up All First Follow-up
Pools of 8† 58/880 (6.6) 24/657 (3.7) 34/223 (15.2) 31.4 (22.1–35.5) 24.4 (18.4–33.1) 34.1 (29.0–36.8)
Pools of 4‡ 38/768 (4.9) 28/491 (5.7) 10/277 (3.6) 29.3 (20.3–33.9) 27.5 (19.4–32.6) 32.2 (24.9–34.5)
Hologic§ 10,000/52,272 (19.1) NA NA 26.2 (20.7–32.6) NA NA
Laboratory-wide¶ 1,358/74,162 (1.8) 1,109/66,070 (1.7) 249/8,092 (3.1) 28.5 (23.0–34.3) 27.2 (22.2–32.4) 34.2 (29.0–37.4)
March 555/8,896 (6.2) 489/8,557 (5.7) 66/339 (19.5) 26.7 (21.9–31.5) 26.4 (21.8–31.2) 28.6 (22.6–35.2)
April 518/22,671 (2.3) 404/21,167 (1.9) 114/1,504 (7.5) 30.6 (24.8–36.0) 28.8 (22.7–34.6) 35.4 (32.9–38.0)
May 172/21,833 (0.8) 136/19,505 (0.7) 36/2,328 (1.5) 27.5 (23.3–34.7) 26.1 (22.5–31.3) 35.4 (30.4–37.3)
June 113/20,762 (0.5) 80/16,841 (0.5) 33/3,921 (0.84) 28.2 (21.2–33.6) 27.4 (21.3–32.7) 30.6 (20.2–34.4)

*Ct, cycle threshold; IQR, interquartile range; NA, not available.

†Pools of 8 specimens were tested in our clinical laboratory during June 10–19, 2020.

‡Pools of 4 specimens were tested in our clinical laboratory during July 6–23, 2020.

§Hologic dataset comprises specimens tested clinically by Panther Fusion (https://www.hologic.com) during March 1–July 31, 2020 at 2 different external sites. These data were used to perform in silico sensitivity analysis to evaluate pool sizes of 3 and 5.

¶Composed of clinical specimens obtained during March 1–June 24, 2020.

Main Article

Page created: September 29, 2020
Page updated: December 21, 2020
Page reviewed: December 21, 2020
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