STUDY OF SARS COVID INFECTION IN THE ALBANIAN POPULATION THROUGH MOLECULAR TECHNIQUES

Résumé fourni par la source

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome CoV-2 happened in world at the beginning of 2020.The virus SARS-CoV-2, appeared even in a small country like Albania, with mass diffusion during the years 2020-2021.In this situation, it was necessary to develop and adapt safe, accurate, fast, and simple technologies for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 to prevent the spread of the disease.The "Intermedica" Medical Clinic was involved in the identification, monitoring and study of population immunization.This study analyzes the infection during an eightmonth period, from September 2020 until April 2021, using and comparing the detection performance of two molecular assays for SARS-CoV-2, Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2 (Cepheid) and Euroimmun EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2.First of all, 100 nasopharyngeal swab samples were tested with both methods.The samples were collected from ambulatory patients at "Intermedica" Clinic.The virus RNA was extracted with The QIAamp Viral RNA Mini kit from Qiagen, and the samples were tested with EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay with RT-PCR platform of the LightCycler 480 (Roche) and Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2(Cepheid). From the 100 specimens, 37 resulted negative and 62 resulted positive (LDT Ct< 30) with both assays, with an agreement of 99%.Testing was repeated only for a single sample with discrepant results.For this sample, the Cepheid assay resulted repeatedly negative for SARS-CoV-2.The initial EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay result was positive for SARS-CoV-2, though the cycle threshold (Ct) values for detection was 32.0 (low positivity).These results suggest that SARS-CoV-2 was present at a very low concentration, near the detection limit of the EURORealTime assay.For an accurate result we decided to test all the samples with low level of viral load with both assays.Furthermore, due to lack of supply of tests from Cobas Roche, the "Intermedica" Clinic implemented the EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay with RT-PCR platform of the Light Cycler 480 (Roche).56,385 individuals were tested with the EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay with RT-PCR platform of the LightCycler 480 (Roche) for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, from September 2020 to April 2021.The genetic material was extracted through the QIAamp Mini Viral RNA Kit, then the preparation of the MasterMix, through the EURORealTime SARS COV 2 kit and reading in the cobas z 480 were performed.After the measurements, the data was arranged in tables and subjected to statistical processing, using the SPSS program, to analyze and identify the most affected age and gender groups, from September 2020 to April 2021.

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