Comparison of analytical sensitivity and efficiency for SARS-CoV-2 primer sets by TaqMan-based and SYBR Green-based RT-qPCR

ABSTRACT: The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to threaten public health. For developing countries where vaccines are still in shortage, cheaper alternative molecular methods for SARS-CoV-2 identification can be crucial to prevent the next wave. Therefore, 14 primer sets recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) was evaluated on testing both clinical patient and environmental samples with the gold standard diagnosis method, TaqMan-based RT-qPCR, and a cheaper alternative method, SYBR Green-based RT-qPCR. Using suitable primer sets, such as ORF1ab, 2019_nCoV_N1 and 2019_nCoV_N3, the performance of the SYBR Green approach was comparable or better than the TaqMan approach, even when considering the newly dominating or emerging variants, including Delta, Eta, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, and Omicron. ORF1ab and 2019_nCoV_N3 were the best combination for sensitive and reliable SARS-CoV-2 molecular diagnostics due to their high sensitivity, specificity, and broad accessibility. KEY POINTS: • With suitable primer sets, the SYBR Green method performs better than the TaqMan one. • With suitable primer sets, both methods should still detect the new variants well. • ORF1ab and 2019_nCoV_N3 were the best combination for SARS-CoV-2 detection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00253-022-11822-4.