Ultra-fast one-step RT-PCR protocol for the detection of SARS-CoV-2

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdowns all over the world thus affecting nearly all aspects of social life and also had a huge impact on global economies. Since vaccines and therapies are still not available for the population, prevention becomes desperately needed. One important aspect for prevention is the identification and subsequent isolation of contagious specimens. The currently used methods for diagnostics are time consuming and also hindered by the limited availability of reagents and reaction costs, thus presenting a bottle neck for prevention of COVID-19 spread. Here, we present a new ultra-fast test method which is ten times faster than conventional diagnostic tests using real time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). In addition, this ultra-fast method is easy to handle as well as cost effective. We translated published SARS-CoV-2 testing protocols from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) and the Charité Berlin (Germany) to the NEXTGENPCR (NGPCR) machine and combined it with a fluorescence-based endpoint measurement. Fluorescence was measured with a commercial blue light scanner. We confirmed the NEXTGENPCR results with commercially available positive controls. In addition, we isolated RNA from SARS-CoV-2 infected patients and achieved similar results to clinical RT-qPCR assays. Here, we could show correlation between the results obtained by NEXTGENPCR and conventional RT-qPCR.