Performance Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 PCR Tests in A Single Health System: Analysis of over 10,000 Results from Three Different Assays

The current pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in the approval of numerous molecular diagnostic assays with various performance and technical capacities. There are limited data comparing performance among assays. We conducted a retrospective analysis of>10,000 test results among three widely used RT-PCR assays for COVID-19 (CDC, Simplexa Direct, and TaqPath) to assess performance characteristics. We also re-tested remnant weakly positive specimens to assess analytical sensitivity. All assays had strong linear correlation and little bias among cycle threshold (Ct) values for PCR targets.

Source: Journal of Molecular Diagnostics - December 4, 2020 Category: Pathology Authors: Travis K. Price, Brian C. Bowland, Sukantha Chandrasekaran, Omai B. Garner, Shangxin Yang Source Type: research