Figure 3.

PKTP protocol performance in a clinical setting. Frozen saliva from 70 previously diagnosed COVID-19 patients at the INER hospital in Mexico City were used to compare human and viral RNA detection between the CDC RNA-extraction protocol (RNA) and our PKTP-inactivating protocol followed by direct RT-qPCR without RNA extraction. We used (A) hRP_FAM, (B) SARS-N1_FAM, and (C) SARS-N2_FAM (CDC probes, see Table 1) Cts-comparing protocols using paired samples (top panels). Lower panels display Pearson’s correlation test between protocols for each target. n = 70. (D) Ct values obtained by purifying RNA with a commercial kit (Qiagen) from PKTP-inactivated saliva samples.