An Alternative Workflow For Molecular Detection Of Sars-Cov-2-Escape From The Na Extraction Kit-Shortage, Copenhagen, Denmark, March 2020

The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 caused by the newly discovered SARS-CoV-2 a pandemic. Due to growing demand for reagents and/or kits to extract SARS-CoV-2 RNA for subsequent RT-qPCR diagnostics, there is a worldwide risk of shortages. With a detection sensitivity of 97.4% (95% CI: 86.2-99.9%), we describe a simple, fast, alternative workflow for molecular detection of SARS-CoV-2, where samples are simply heat-processed for 5 min at 98 degrees C before a commonly-used RT-qPCR procedure.