Surveillance of omicron variant in Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, India during the 3rd disease wave of COVID-19.

INTRODUCTION: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) wave has fluctuated erratically around the globe over the past three years of the pandemic, sometimes declining and at other times surging. The cases of infection in India have remained low, despite the continued surge of Omicron sub-lineages reported in a few countries. In this study, we determined the presence of the circulating severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) strains in the population of Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, India. METHODOLOGY: In vitro diagnostic real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed using Tata MD CHECK RT-PCR Omisure kit (Tata Medical and Diagnostics Limited, Maharashtra, India), to detect the presence of Omicron in target samples. A total of 400 samples were analyzed in this study; 200 each for the second and third waves, respectively. The S gene target failure (SG-TF) and S gene mutation amplification (SG-MA) primer-probe sets were used. RESULTS: Our results corroborated that during the third wave, SG-MA amplification was noted, while amplification of SG-TF was not, and vice versa in the case of the second wave, indicating that all the tested patients were infected with the Omicron variant during the third wave, while Omicron was absent during the second wave. CONCLUSIONS: This study added more information about the prevalence of Omicron variants during the third wave in the chosen area, and it projected a use of in vitro RT-qPCR method for rapid prospective determination of the prevalence of the variant of concern (VOC) in developing countries with limited sequencing facility.

Combating the progression of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 infectious Disease: Current state and future prospects in molecular diagnostic and drug discovery.

A highly infectious and life-threatening virus originated from Wuhan, China in late 2019 and rapidly spread all over the world. This novel virus belongs to coronavirus family and is associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), causing respiratory disease known as COVID-19. In March 2020, WHO has declared COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Morbidity and mortality are swiftly rising day by day with the situation more severe and fatal for the co-morbid population. Many COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic, but they are silently spreading the infection. There is a need for proper screening of infected patients to prevent the epidemic transmission of disease and also for the early curative interventions to reduce the risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19 illness. To date, the diagnostic assays fall under two categories, molecular detection of viral genetic material by realtime RT-polymerase chain reaction and serological test, which rely on detecting antiviral antibodies. Unfortunately, there are no effective prophylactics and therapeutics available against COVID-19. However, few drugs are showing promising antiviral activity against it and presently are referred for the clinical trials, albeit FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for emergency use of few drugs in the manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This review gives an insight into current progress, challenges and future prospects of laboratory detection methods of COVID-19 and also highlights the clinical stage of the major proposed or evidence based drugs/vaccines recommended against the novel SARS-CoV-2 pandemic virus.