BiOptic - Surveillance Pooling Test models

As the weather turned cooler in parts of the northern hemisphere, the COVID-19 pandemic is getting serious again in lots of countries. From the beginning of this pandemic, every health organization around the world has put a lot of efforts on finding the right strategy to stop it. Somehow, it seems that there is no effective way.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US has suggested a monitoring method - surveillance pooling test, which divides a large group into several small groups, and the samples of each group are mixed into one sample for testing and analysis; if a positive result has shown up in a group, the members of this group will conduct further tests individually. This method got the advantages of testing large groups with a small number of samples and at a lower cost, which is very suitable for schools, factories, communities, companies, and other units. The suggested testing process is continuously every 1 to 2 days, in order to find out the COVID-19 carrier and take steps before the situation worsens.

For example, Duke University has applied surveillance pooling test in campus since August 2020, and the result shown that they have well-managed the situation in the campus and successfully keep it running. However, the current detection methods require a complicated process, which has to be done by professionals, so that the collected samples have to be sent to the testing laboratory. Problems such as timeliness and the contamination or even pathogen spreading of the samples might happen in the delivery process. Despite the time or money spent, whether the number of testing reagents and professional scientists is enough will be a big issue. Moreover, the monitoring process needs to be conducted regularly, the nasal swab is not accepted by some people because of the uncomfortableness.

Recently, BiOptic has launched a set of products which is suitable for COVID-19 surveillance pooling test. This set of monitoring solutions take saliva as testing samples. The specially designed reagent formula can bypass the step of nucleic acid extraction. In addition, the instruments in the nucleic acid amplification and analysis stages have also been pre-programmed, so that people without professional molecular biology skills can conduct easily. By the way, BiOptic has used this product with surveillance pooling test for precautionary measures.

BiOptic believes that this surveillance pooling test model is user-friendly and has low demand for professional skills and equipment, which will be the only way for facilities and institutions to proceed surveillance pooling test on-site with the low cost and trigger huge benefits for the society.