Analytical and clinical comparison of Viasure (CerTest Biotec) and 2019-nCoV CDC (IDT) RT-qPCR kits for SARS-CoV2 diagnosis.

Abstract Background Several RT-qPCR kits are available for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, some of them with Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by FDA, but most of them lacking of proper evaluation studies due to covid19 emergency. Objective We evaluated Viasure RT-qPCR kit (CerTest Biotec, Spain) for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis using FDA EUA 2019-nCoV CDC kit (IDT, USA) as gold standard. Results Although we found the lack of RNA quality control probe as the main limitation for the Viasure kit, the sensitivity was 91.9% and the specificity was 100%. The limit of detection (LOD) was 2000 copies/mL and 1000 copies/mL for Viasure and IDT kits, respectively. Conclusions Viasure RT-qPCR kit is a relatively reliable tool for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis but improvement of an alternative RT-qPCR reaction for RNA extraction quality control as RNaseP is recommended.