Abstract

In the context of SARS-Cov-2 virus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, molecular diagnostic tools were rapidly developed as there are fundamental for a rapid detection of infected people. In this context, and in order to optimize the manipulations and reduce the time to get results, we report the successful use of a sampling tool for covid19 diagnosis names microFLOQ Direct (MFD). Hundred upper respiratory speciments sampled from patients with potential covid19 were evaluated using MFD, and results were compared to the results obtained by standard sampling procedure using dry swabs and physiologic serum as the transport medium.

MFD results compared to results issues from the classic RNA purification and amplification steps from transport medium showed that MFD can be directly used for RT-PCR analysis without the preliminary inactivation and extraction steps. So, MFD could limit handling errors compared to the different treatment steps with dry swabs and transport medium, and therefore the risk of operator contamination, and could simplify the analytical process and enables to get results in less than 2 hours. We expect that the proposed detection kit using MFD sampling represents a relevant and operational screening tool in the fied of molecular detection of viral and bacterial diseases during pandemic or for public health or agro-veterinary purposes.