Descripción general de las metodologías de detección y cuantificación de SARS-CoV-2 en muestras clínicas

Abstract

At the end of 2019, a new type of coronavirus appeared, known as SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19. This virus spread rapidly and in March 2020 it was declared a pandemic by COVID-19. The most common symptoms of the disease are fever, muscle pain, shortness of breath, cough, loss of smell and taste, headache and diarrhea in 10 percent of infected patients. On the other hand, there are patients who do not present any symptoms, known as asymptomatic patients. Among the critical factors for an adequate response to a viral pandemic, timely detection and isolation of potentially infected individuals are considered first. Thus, the appearance of new variants (alpha, delta, omicron) and the study of the complete genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 allowed the development of new molecular analysis technologies.

The main objective of this research was to investigate the methodologies for the detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2. For the development of the study, inclusion and exclusion criteria were proposed, such as: books, articles, documents and reports of scientific bases and research carried out at from the year 2019. As a result, approximately 150 documents were obtained that were analyzed for the present investigation. Specifically, the different technologies available, the types of samples and their processing, SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequencing techniques, as well as the advantages and limitations of current methods were studied.