The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated sensitive, fast and inexpensive testing for the virus on university campuses across the nation in 2020 prior to the widespread availability of vaccines. Early testing efforts were limited by bottlenecks on reagents, low throughput testing options and slow return of test results. In this paper we detail the testing pipeline we established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for rapid, inexpensive and sensitive surveillance testing for SARS-CoV-2 and highlight the strengths of the platform that would allow it to be applied to other disease surveillance projects, SARS-CoV-2 variant testing or future pandemics.
Keywords: COVID-19; RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2; Surveillance.