Detection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by TaqMan Real-Time PCR in Iran

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is known as a positivesense single-strand RNA virus and leads to Coronavirus disease 2019 .Coronaviruses significantly impact the human respiratory tract.Coronavirus disease is potentially fatal and transmissible in the world.In this study we evaluated the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 in 220 patients with un-explained pneumonia by TaqMan real-time PCR assay regarding open reading frame (ORF1ab) and nucleocapsid (N) protein genes.Materials and methods: Totally, 224 patients entered the study.Upper and lower respiratory tract secretion samples were obtained during 2020 from patients.Samples contained nose and throat swabs with viral transport medium.RNA was isolated from clinical samples with the GenePure Plus fully automatic Nucleic Acid Purification System, Hangzhou, China).Outcomes: 72.32% of cases were positive for COVID-19.All positive cases had the most common symptoms of illness regarding fatigue, dry cough, dyspnea, headache, abdominal pain, nausa, vomiting and myalgia.Fever was observed in 50% of positive cases.Chest computed tomography (CT) scan of all tested patients indicated two-sided chest involvement.Conclusions: Detection of COVID-19 by TaqMan real-time PCR seems to be a powerful method for the screening and detection of novel corona virus infection.