Quantitative analysis of different respiratory specimens on two automated test systems for detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

Molecular testing of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is essential during the pandemic. Here, we compared the results of different respiratory specimens including anterior nasal swabs, pharyngeal swabs, saliva swabs, and gargle lavage samples to nasopharyngeal swabs on two automated SARS-CoV-2 test systems. Samples were collected and tested simultaneously from a total of 36 hospitalized symptomatic COVID-19 patients. Detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 was performed on cobas®6800 (Roche) and NeuMoDx™ (Qiagen) systems. Both assays showed reliable detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, with nasopharyngeal swabs showing the highest sensitivity. SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations in other respiratory specimens were lower (mean 2.5 log10 copies/ml) or even undetectable in up to 20%. These data clearly indicate that not all respiratory materials are equally suitable for the management of hospitalized patients, especially, in the late phase of COVID-19, when the viral phase subsides and inflammation becomes the predominant factor, making detection of even lower viral loads increasingly important.

IOT based automation of Hardware-In-Loop test bench

The setup of an automated hardware-in-the-loop test bench using the IOT's ethernet facility is proposed in this paper. The implementation of this embedded structure was critical in the COVID-19 scenario for sticking to social distancing guidelines. The key hardware used to automate the manual test benches for in-house development of this embedded solution is an Arduino UNO with an Ethernet shield.Automated test bench setups have benefits over manual test bench setups, such as shorter testing times and no manual effort. The results show that the proposed automated hardware-in-the-loop test bench setup was successfully implemented, with the added benefit of internet of things using an Arduino Uno ethernet shield. © 2021 IEEE.