Coronaviruses are a family of large RNA viruses with size ranging from 26 to 32 kb. These viruses are zoonotic and in human can cause respiratory infections. As the coronavirus is an RNA virus it has a relatively high mutation rate resulting in rapid evolution. In December 2019, a new deadly coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 (previously known as 2019-nCoV), which has a high sequence similarity to SARS-CoV, was identified and has caused a disease, known as Covid-19, outbreak in Wuhan, China and spread globally.

ScienCell's SARS-CoV-2 Multiplex RT-qPCR Detection Kit (SCVMPD) is designed to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in respiratory specimens and serum samples. The multiplex primer/probe sets component (Cat #7048-MPP) contains 3 primer/probe sets, N1-FAM, N2-FAM, and RP-HEX. Among them, N1-FAM and N2-FAM target two regions on coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) gene. RP-HEX targets the exon 1 of human RPP30 gene and serves as a control to assess specimen quality. In addition, a non-infectious positive control (Cat #7048-Pos) and nuclease-free water (Cat #7048-H2O) are included in the kit. The positive control (Cat #7048-Pos) consists of non-infectious viral RNA fragments spiked into human small airway epithelial cells and serves to ensure reagents and instruments are working properly. Please refer to Tables 4 and 5 for results interpretation.