Viral load quantitation at the point-of-care with shaken digital droplet RT-LAMP

Viral load quantitation is useful in clinical point-of-care settings to assess the status of patients with infectious disease, track response to treatment, and estimate infectiousness. However, existing methods for quantitating viral loads are complex and difficult to integrate into these settings. Here, we describe a simple, instrument-free approach for viral load quantitation suitable for point-of-care use. We develop a shaken digital droplet assay that can quantitate SARS-CoV2 with sensitivity comparable to gold standard qPCR. This paper describes a simple, rapid, and accurate instrument-free method for viral load quantification that is suitable for the clinical point-of-care environment.