ABSTRACT
To investigate the status of viral infection in the feces of confirmed COVID-19, cases fecal samples or anal swabs from 36 confirmed cases were collected, 2019-nCoV was detected by real-time fluorescence RT-PCR, and the infection rates of the cases were compared by statistical analysis software SPSS 19.0. Among the 36 samples, 20 (55.56%) were positive for 2019-nCoV. The positive rate of critical cases (2/3) and severe cases(6/9) were both 66.67%, the positive rate of common pneumonia was 62.50% (10/16), and the positive rate of mild pneumonia was 25.00% (2/8). The 36 confirmed COVID-19 cases included 22 males and 14 females, with a detection rate of 54.55% and 57.14%, respectively. The age distribution range of the cases was ranging between 17 and 86 years old, with an average age of 48.75 years. Among the 36 samples, 2 positive specimens in 5 anal swab specimens and 18 positive specimens in 31 fecal specimens were detected. There were no statistically significant differences in the positive detection rates among clinical types, genders, ages and specimen types, respectively. From these results, we deduced that fecal samples of confirmed COVID-19 cases contained 2019-nCoV, which can cause infection through potential fecal-oral transmission and be significant for clinical treatment and epidemiological study.
ABSTRACT
To explore genomic characteriation of 2019-nCoV, throat swab specimens from COVID-19 patients were inoculated on Vero-E6 cells. Six days post-inoculation, supernatants of cell cultures were collected, tested, and sequenced on the Ion Torrent S5 Next-Generation Sequencing system. Two strains viruses were isolated from 12 specimens (eight of them were positive in ORF1ab gene and N gene, one of them was positive in N gene and three of them were negative in ORF1ab gene and N gene), as confirmed by online BLAST search at NCBI website. Genetic similarity of more than 99.9% were observed, from genomic level to structure genes including E, M, N and S genes, between the 2 isolates and the 2019-nCoV reference strain Wuhan-Hu-1 that isolated from Wuhan, Hubei province. Therefore, these results indicated that 2019-nCoV isolates in Fujian province have not mutated significantly yet so far.