Epidemiology and diagnostic tools of the new virulent pathogen of COVID-19: Case of Saudi Arabia

Journal of applied sciences research

article

Diana A.H. Al-Quwaie¹  Rania M. Makki² 

[1] Department of Biological Sciences, Science and Arts College, Rabigh Campus, King Abdulaziz University;Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University

关键词: Covid-19;    pathogen;    coronavirus;    genetic;    SARS-CoV-2;    Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).;   

DOI  :  10.22587/jasr.2020.16.4.3

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: AENSI

【 摘 要 】

The rapid spread of COVID-19 from Wuhan City of China to the whole world makes the necessity to adopt the latest technologies in epidemiology and diagnostics mandatory. In Saudi Arabia, the case of COVID-19 is moving more classically. It was proven that the death rate in Saudi Arabia can be the lowest across all countries in the world. A large number of companies and governmental laboratories started to develop new kits and tentative vaccines as for the diagnosis and treatment, while time is not permitting enough testing of either. One of the major factors in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic is the ability to identify all cases of acute respiratory coronavirus type II (SARSCoV-2). Available robust technology is the main pillar of the success of the virus containment plan, which aims to provide widespread testing to the largest number of health service providers and rapid screening laboratories to isolate the progressive number of cases. In addition to the inaccuracy of the tests supplied to many countries including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia due to their design based on isolated viruses from non-Saudi samples. The expensive Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) is currently considered the gold standard for SARS-CoV-2, however, laboratories equipped with this technique is still a stumbling block in examining large suspected cases and asymptomatic cases in the incubation or recovery period. On the other hand, the inexpensive and rapid immunological tests used to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 indirectly carries problems of inaccuracy, and for this reason, most ministries of health across the globe have prohibited their use in the diagnosis. Therefore, the use of the latest Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology became the perfect alternative to conducting genomic scans of some locally isolated viruses and using this information to design a diagnostic test with high-throughput and without the need for expensive laboratory equipment and dependent on the latest genetic information for the locally spreading virus.

【 授权许可】

Unknown