Comparison Of Primer-Probe Sets Among Different Master Mixes For Laboratory Screening Of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (Sars-Cov-2)

Background. There is a shortage of chemical reagents for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) diagnosis and a surge ofSARS-CoV-2cases, especially in limited-resource settings. Therefore, the combination of an optimal assay kit is necessary.Methods. We compared the ability to screenSARS-CoV-2among three primer-probe sets in two different master mixes, Invitrogen (TM) SuperScript (TM) III One-Step RT-PCR and LightCycler Multiplex RNA Virus Master.Results. The assay with TIB-Molbiol, IDT, and Phu Sa sets for LightCycler Multiplex RNA Virus Master or Invitrogen (TM) SuperScript (TM) III One-Step RT-PCR showed positive results from a single reaction of triplicate in the three days of 4.8 copies per reaction.Rsquared and amplification efficiency were 0.97 and ranged from 107 to 108%, respectively.Conclusions. Our findings indicated that TIB-Molbiol, IDT, and Phu Sa primer-probe sets could be beneficial for the laboratory screening ofSARS-CoV-2by RT-qPCR assay of E gene. There is a need to consider the combination of these reagent sets as a new strategy to increase the testing capacity of screening programs for COVID-19.