Interlaboratory Comparison of SARS-CoV2 Molecular Detection Assays in Use by U.S. Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories

Join the Department of Food Science and Nutrition for this seminar series event featuring guest speaker Kaiping Deng, a biologist and staff fellow at the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (FDA/CFSAN) Proficiency Testing Program.

The continued search for intermediate hosts and potential reservoirs for SARS-CoV2 makes it clear that animal surveillance is critical in outbreak response and prevention. U.S. veterinary diagnostic laboratories have used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays or other national reference laboratory methods to test animal samples, but they have only been evaluated using internal validation protocols. To help laboratories evaluate their test methods, interlaboratory comparison exercises were conducted by the Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network in the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, Moffett Proficiency Testing Team in FDA/CFSAN, and other organizations. The results revealed the specificity and sensitivity of each laboratory's detection methods and their ability to detect the emerging variants Alpha and Beta.