Evaluation of a SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test for detection of antibody in human, canine, cat and hamster sera.

Surrogate neutralization assays for SARS-CoV-2 that can be done without biosafety-level-3 containment and in multiple species are desirable. We evaluate a recently developed surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT) in comparison to 90% plaque reduction neutralization tests (PRNT90) in human, canine, cat and hamster sera. With PRNT90 as reference, sVNT had sensitivity of 98.9% and specificity of 98.8% respectively. Using a panel of immune sera to other coronaviruses, we confirm the lack of cross reactivity to other coronaviruses in SARS-CoV-2 sVNT and PRNT90 assays, except for cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-1 in sVNT.