ABSTRACT
SARS-CoV2 requires full attention from all countries because this disease can cause death in patients with comorbid diseases. Though some countries already put the endemic status for COVID19, the emerging cases due to new variants should be prevented by mass tracing. Extraction test RT-qPCR is still the gold standard in declaring someone infected with COVID-19. However, the high cost of financing in RT-qPCR is the biggest problem in the diagnostic test process. Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) is an inexpensive, accurate, and fast method that amplifies the nucleic acid by using four or six different primers. By doing some modification and enhancement, LAMP method assay and its modified technique could replace RT-qPCR as a rapid, sensitive, low-cost assay when there is a need for increased sample throughput by semi-quantitative visual detection. The LAMP method could promote faster and more economic tracing methods in the dense population. © 2022 UPM Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious with speed transmission and cause pandemic around the globe. A real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has become the major diagnostic method for COVID-19. Some believe that releasing patient from isolation or evaluating clinical progression could be made based on cycle threshold (CT) values. Here, we aimed to compare CT-value to the clinical insight using three different PCR's kit. Method: We collected 48 patients with confirmed COVID19 positive, then we divided into three groups that were (1) pneumonia, (2) non-pneumonia and (3) asymptomatic. The specimens came from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs, were extracted using the same matrix column method and then detected by RT-PCR using different kit. The kits were commercially that detect Orf1ab, E gene (kit A);Orf1ab, N, E gene (kit B) and Orf1ab, N gene (kit C). Thus, we compared the result using comparation analysis based on CT-value and clinical groups by using SPSS 20.0 Result: From those patients there were 23 asymptomatic (48%), 9 symptomatic non-pneumonia (19%) and 16 pneumonia cases (33%) respectively. The mean difference of CT-values within three kits were wide and convergence. There were also significantly different (Kruskal-Wallis Test) between clinical course and CT-value in three PCR's kit even from the same detected gene (p< 0.005). Conclusion: This study conclude that CT-value cannot be the only determination to exclude patient from the isolation or to predict the clinical manifestation in COVID-19 since it has wide variation within same sample in different PCR kits. © 2022 UPM Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Objectives: The symptoms of COVID-19 resemble those of a variety of mild to severe clinical conditions. Having epidemiological knowledge of the clinical symptoms of COVID-19 and associated factors may help health workers to diagnose and manage the disease. Assessment of COVID-19’s clinical symptoms is therefore necessary to support health workers in Banten, Indonesia. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, we purposively analysed 1492 medical records from our online COVID-19 database. All data were analysed in a consecutive manner and were shown as percentages or significances. Results: Medical records revealed that 577 patients (39%) were male and 915 (61%) were female. Our sample contained 106 patients (7%) who tested positive for COVID-19. Among these 106 patients, 70 were asymptomatic (66%) while the rest (34%) had single or multiple clinical symptoms. The most common symptom was fever (16%), followed by cough (15%), fatigue (11%), headache (11%), dysphagia (10%), rhinorrhoea (8%), nausea (7%), dyspnoea (4%) and diarrhoea (2%). Subsequently, gender differences were found to be significantly associated with positive cases (p<0.05), the appearance of clinical symptoms (p<0.05), and decision whether to hospitalize or self-isolate (p<0.05). Conclusion: Fever, cough and fatigue predominated in the COVID-19 symptoms reported by our patients. Additionally, gender differences should be carefully considered in developing better management processes.