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Public Health Guidance for Community-Level Preparedness and Response to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Version 2 Supplement F: Laboratory Guidance Appendix F8—Guidelines for Laboratory Diagnosis of SARS-CoV Infection May 3, 2005

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Laboratory confirmation of SARS-CoV infection is based on:

• Detection of any of the following by a validated test, with confirmation in a reference laboratory:
  • Serum antibodies to SARS-CoV in a single serum specimen, or
  • A four-fold or greater increase in SARS-CoV antibody titer between acute- and convalescent-phase serum specimens tested in parallel, or
  • Negative SARS-CoV antibody test result on acute-phase serum and positive SARS-CoV antibody test result on convalescent-phase serum tested in parallel; or
• Isolation in cell culture of SARS-CoV from a clinical specimen, with confirmation using a test validated by CDC; or
• Detection of SARS-CoV RNA by RT-PCR validated by CDC, with confirmation in a reference laboratory, from:
  • Two clinical specimens from different sources, or
  • Two clinical specimens collected from the same source on two different days
    

Guidelines for the collection of specimens from potential cases of SARS are provided in Appendix F4.