Easing diagnosis and pushing the detection limits of SARS-CoV-2

Rigorous testing is the way forward to fight the COVID-19 pandemic Here we show that the currently used and most reliable RT-PCR based SARS-CoV-2 procedure can be further simplified to make it faster, safer, and economical by eliminating the RNA isolation step The modified method is not only fast and convenient but also at par with the traditional method in terms of accuracy, and therefore, can be used for mass screening Our method takes about half the time and is cheaper by about 40% compared to the currently used method We also provide a variant of the new method that increases the efficiency of detection by about 30% compared to the existing procedure Taken together, we demonstrate a more effective and reliable method of SARS-CoV-2 detection