Pooling of nasopharyngeal swabs to identify asymptomatic cases of SARS-CoV-2 virus during first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction. Public and private health services worldwide have faced difficulties under the COVID-19 pandemic. High numbers of asymptomatic carriers difficulted the surveillance and tracing of infectious individuals. Also, diagnostic laboratories suffered shortage of reagents to perform on-time diagnosis. Pooling of clinical samples offers an alternative to overcome reagents unavailability and diagnosis of asymptomatic individuals. Methods. We performed pooling of 1937 clinical samples from asymptomatic people performing essential activities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Yucatan, Mexico. Diagnosis by real time RT-PCR using the Berlin Method was performed in 229 pools. Results. The strategy successfully detected asymptomatic COVID-19 positive cases. A total of 27 pools were positive. Individuals performing essential activities as government administrative, food markets and police force were the most commonly positive. Conclusion. Pooling clinical samples is a strategy for the on-time isolation of infected individuals as well for saving laboratory resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]