Nucleic acid extraction:
Total nucleic acid was extracted from 55 µl of each sample (cell culture supernatant, nasal and oral swabs, serum, whole blood or 10% tissue suspensions) using 5X MagMAXTM Pathogen RNA/DNA Kit on a MagMAX™ Express-96 Deep well magnetic particle processor (Applied Biosystems™) following manufacturer’s protocol. The nucleic acid was eluted in 50 µl of elution buffer. The MagMAX-96 magnetic particle processor was used to extract samples per appropriate script for the sample volume tested.