PerkinElmer announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to allow sample pooling with the PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit to increase the number of individuals who can be tested without increasing resources, according to a press release.
Laboratories certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) can now use the real-time RT-PCR in vitro diagnostic assay for COVID-19 to pool multiple samples together using the resources needed for a single test. If a pooled test is negative, all the individual samples are considered negative. If the pooled test is positive, each of the individual samples in that pool should be tested again separately to determine which of the samples are positive. For sample pooling to be effective, screening using a highly sensitive test is integral.
From comparative data released by the FDA, the new kit has the lowest Limit of Detection (LoD) among the authorized COVID-19 molecular diagnostic tests reported, deeming it the most sensitive assay that can detect 3-fold less viral material in samples compared to the assay in second place, and over 90-fold times less viral material in samples compared to the industry average.
“The FDA has recognized that there is great interest in sample pooling to test for COVID-19,” said Masoud Toloue, PhD, Vice President and General Manager, Diagnostics, PerkinElmer. “The ability to pool samples using a highly sensitive RT-PCR test offers diagnostic labs an efficient and accurate way to increase testing capacity.”
