Conclusion
We found that the developed assay rapidly detects SARS-CoV-2 RNA in clinical samples in a cost-effective manner and would be useful in pandemic management by facilitating mass screening.
Results
The results were validated using nasopharyngeal RNA samples from positive COVID-19 subjects (n = 136). Using real-time polymerase chain reaction as gold standard, the assay was found to have 85.29% sensitivity and 94.12% specificity. The optimized method has detection limit as little as 0.5 ng of SARS-CoV-2 RNA.