Performance Evaluation of RealDetect™ COVID-19 RT-PCR Kit for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Virus

The novel Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-C0V 2) originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019. As of April 15 2020, the virus has spread across 213 countries/territories with 1,914,916 cases and 123,010 deaths and a crude case fatality ratio (CFR) of 6.4%. In Bangladesh, the situation is also grave. As of May 14, 2020, there were 18,863 cases and 283 deaths.

In order to suppress COVID-19 transmission, it is important to diagnose COVID-19 patients, which would help in the process of quarantine and isolation of the patients and also in contact tracing. COVID-19 testing can identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus and includes methods that detect the presence of virus itself such as real time reverse-transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), isothermal nucleic acid amplification, antigen) and those that detect antibodies produced in response to infection. Until now, RT-PCR has been known as the best approach for - detection. It would be very useful if Bangladesh had its own locally produced RT-PCR kits, provided that the kits are no less in quality than imported kits in terms of sensitivity, specificity, price etc. The present study aims to carry out the performance evaluation of RealDetect RT-PCR Kit for COVID-19 detection.

The RealDetect™ COVID-19 RT-PCR diagnostic panel is a locally produced real-time RT-PCR test intended for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swab specimens collected from individuals who meet SARS-CoV-2 clinical criteria. The approach is based on the RT-PCR method which uses two (Nucleocapsid 1, Nucleocapsid 2) sets of gene-specific primers and corresponding fluorescent probes to detect two specific regions within the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) nucleocapsid protein Nucleocapsid gene. This RT-PCR panel detects SARS-CoV-2 Ribonucleic acid (RNA) specifically. The approach does not generate any false positives to other coronaviruses or human microflora. The kit also contains a primer-probe set which detects human housekeeping gene, ribonuclease Protein (RNase P). That is, the Ribonuclease Protein (RNase P) serves as an internal reference control to monitor sample collection, ribonucleic acid (RNA) extraction, and amplification.

This is a case control study. The study will analyze 120 samples (60 COVID-19 positive and 60 COVID-19 negative both fresh and frozen) from Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR). These specimens will be blinded before handing over to Institute for Developing Science & Health Initiatives (ideSHi) for RealDetect Kit. All samples will be analyzed by Real Time PCR System. Necessary validation will also be carried out at the COVID-19 laboratory of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and an external validation expert will be involved. The Principal Investigator (PI) will also receive the sample information regarding positive/negative status from Institute for Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) and compare ideSHi and IEDCR data. Unpaired t-test, Wilcox's test, Rank test, Compare test, Mean test, Sensitivity/Specificity test, Regression analysis and Geometric mean with 95% Confidence Interval (CI) will be used to analyze the data. It needs to conduct a univariate analysis.