Emergence of New SARS-CoV2 Omicron Variants after the Change of Surveillance and Control Strategy.

In January 2022, there was a global and rapid surge of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 related to more transmission. This coincided with an increase in the incidence in Asturias, a region where rapid diagnosis and containment measures had limited the circulation of variants. METHODS: From January to June 2022, 34,591 variants were determined by the SNP method. From them, 445 were characterized by the WGS method and classified following pangolin program and phylogenic analysis. RESULTS: The Omicron variant went from being detected in 2438 (78%) samples in the first week of January 2021 to 4074 (98%) in the third week, according to the SNP method. Using the WGS method, 159 BA.1 (35.7%), 256 BA.2 (57.6%), 1 BA.4 (0.2%) and 10 BA.5 (2.2%) Omicron variants were found. Phylogenetic analysis detected that three new sub-clades, BA.2,3.5, BA.2.56 and BF1, were circulating. CONCLUSIONS: The increase in the incidence of SARS-CoV2 caused the circulation of new emerging variants. Viral evolution calls for continuous genomic surveillance.

[A review on new commercial methods for HIV-1 and HCV viral load determinations]. / Evaluación crítica de los nuevos métodos comerciales para la determinación de la carga viral del VIH-1 y del VHC.

Viral load techniques are more and more demanded in Clinical Microbiology, regarding with transplanted patients or long time follow-up of chronic diseases as those caused by human inmunodeficiency (HIV) and hepatitis C (HCV) viruses. In the last 2 years, pharmaceutical companies, interested to develop more efficient and accurate methods for the diagnosis and correct viral quantification of HIV and HCV, have converged in the real time-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. This process is due to the increased sensitiviy, accuracy, linearity and correct detection of genomic viral variants of real time PCR techniques, in comparison with classical molecular methods applied since the nineties of the past century. In spite real time PCR appears as the best tool for the immediate future, new questions regarding the high variability of these viruses should be considered. This could affect the correctness of viral quantifications, while being difficult to detect it because of the methodological uniformity in the clinical laboratories.