A screening strategy for identifying the dominant variant of SARS-COV-2 in the fifth peak of Kurdistan- Iran population using HRM and Probe-based RT-PCR assay

By the emergence of SARS CoV-2 variants, many studies were developed to deal with it. The high transmissibility and mortality rate of some variants, in particular developing countries have caused the operation of simple diagnostic tests for genomic surveillance. In this study, we developed two assays of High Resolution Melting (HRM) and Probe-based RT-PCR as simple and inexpensive methods to identify the variants. We screened the mutations of del69–70, E484K, E484Q, D614G, L452R, and T478K in 100 cases from SARS-COV-2 positive patients in Kurdistan- Iran population. In general, the result of the two methods overlapped each other, nevertheless, we suggested HRM results be confirmed with a standard assay (Whole-Genome Sequencing). This work indicated that HRM as the rapid and inexpensive method could identify and categorize the variants of SARS CoV-2 and reduce the costs for carrying out sequencing.