TestEd: Developing and evaluating an affordable whole-system approach for early detection of viral infections in workplaces and communities

爱丁堡大学的测试项目将开发和评估负担得起的早期检测新冠肺炎的全系统方法，这将为大规模定期测试提供蓝图，以保护工作场所和社区免受新冠肺炎以及潜在未来流行病的影响。具体来说，我们将：-实施我们现已在爱丁堡大学两个学院建立的系统，用于简化、有效和可访问的参与者和样本登记，新冠肺炎基于新颖的样本池策略，自动、及时地反馈结果，在整个爱丁堡大学人口中，每周进行两次检测，并快速隔离无症状携带者-对所有参与者进行在线调查，并对病毒检测呈阳性的人进行定性访谈，以了解面对疫情的态度和行为，以及教职员工和学生对定期检测和自我隔离的潜在需要的看法-对管道进行卫生经济建模，包括我们的策略，在我们的初步分析(参见其他信息表)已经显示具有每个样本40便士的测试成本的潜在测试的病毒的策略，至少比其他测试策略低十分之一-评估两种池策略的有效性和效率-基于PCR的超级立方体池和基于序列的SwabSeq-在至少10,000个样本上与单独的PCR测试并排比较它们的性能，然后通过使用性能更好的池策略，在获奖的12个月内测试从大学教职员工和学生那里收集的50万个样本-与大学内外的合作者合作，优化我们实验室流程的后勤，从而最大限度地减少实验室每一步的时间和实验室工作人员的动手时间，最大限度地利用机器人自动化，从而最大限度地减少总体周转时间。我们目前的周转时间是在8小时样本采集期结束后24小时内100%返回结果。我们将在整个研究过程中对此进行监控，向我们的参与者社区和MRC提供报告，目标是在整个扩展过程中保持在24小时内尽可能接近100%的结果返回，并全面测试能力-与我们的参与者社区、大学领导团队、我们在NHS内的合作者、我们提供设备和试剂的合作者以及爱丁堡创新公司(我们的技术转移组织)一起开发未来的资助机会，并在资金期限结束时在大学内外部署我们的管道和技术诀窍。这包括有机会与政府和非政府组织合作影响政策，并将我们的系统、知识和经验部署到其他工作场所和社区--与政策制定者和医疗保健提供者接触，以确保我们在大规模检测方面的结果和经验能够被纳入国家和可能的国际应对大流行的政策和实践。

The TestEd programme at the University of Edinburgh will develop and evaluate an affordable whole system approach for early detection of COVID-19 that will provide a blueprint for large-scale regular testing to protect workplaces and communities from COVID-19 and, potentially, future pandemics. Specifically we will:- Implement our system that has now been established in two Institutes of the University of Edinburgh for streamlined, effective and accessible participant and sample registration, COVID-19 based on novel sample pooling strategies, automated, timely feedback of results, across the entire University of Edinburgh population, for twice weekly testing and rapid isolation of asymptomatic carriers- Conduct online surveys of all participants, and qualitative interviews on those who test positive for the virus, to understand attitudes and behaviour in the face of the pandemic, and the views of staff and students regarding regular testing and the potential need for self-isolation- Carry out health economic modelling of the pipeline, including our strategy to test for the virus in pooled samples that our preliminary analyses (see Additional Information Form) have shown have the potential for tests costing 40p per sample, at least ten-fold lower than other testing strategies- Evaluate efficacy and efficiency of the two pooling strategies - PCR-based hypercube pooling and sequence-based SwabSeq - by side-by-side comparison of their performance against individual PCR tests on a minimum of 10,000 samples and then, by using the pooling strategy with better performance, to test half a million samples collected from University staff and students within the 12 month period of the award- Engage with our collaborators within and outside the University to optimise the logistics of our laboratory processes, thereby minimising the time of each laboratory step and hands-on lab staff time, maximising use of robotic automation, thereby minimising overall turnaround time. Our current turnaround time is 100% return of results within 24 hours of the end of the 8-hour sample collection period. We shall monitor this through the course of the study period, providing reports to our participant community and to the MRC, aiming to remain as close as possible to 100% return of results within 24 hours throughout scale up and to full testing capacity- Engage with our participant community, the University leadership team, our collaborators within the NHS, our collaborators providing equipment and reagents and Edinburgh Innovations (our technology transfer organisation) to develop opportunities for future funding and deployment of our pipeline and knowhow within and outside the University at the conclusion of the funding period. This includes the opportunity to work with Government and non-governmental organisations to influence policy and to deploy our system, knowledge and experience to other workplaces and communities- Engage with policymakers and healthcare providers to ensure that our results and experience with large-scale testing can be fed into national and possibly international policy and practice for pandemic responses.