Abstract
From 16 March to 15 December 2020, 132,357 naso-pharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs were collected in the province of Teramo, Abruzzo Region, Italy, and tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA by a commercially available molecular assay. A total of 12,880 swabs resulted positive. For 8212 positive patients (4.150 women and 4.062 men) the median age was statistically different between women (median: 49.55 ± 23.9 of SD) and men (median: 48.35 ± 23.5 of SD) while no differences were found in the comparison between the cycle threshold for the N protein-encoding gene (CT N) median values and gender. Differences were observed in the CT N gene median values of swabs collected from March to September as well as in the pairwise comparison between September and October and between November and December. The CT N gene median values observed in specific periods characterizing the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in 2020 were also compared with the incidence of COVID-19 cases; a strong inverse correlation was highlighted (Pearson correlation coefficient = −0.978). Our findings confirm the usefulness of the CT N values as an indirect detection parameter to monitor viral loads in the population.
Highlights
Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, almost 137,866,311 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 cases were reported globally [1]
From 16 March to 15 December 2020, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise (IZSAM) analyzed a total of 132,357 naso-pharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs (NNS) collected in the province of Teramo and 12.880 NNS tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by qPCR
CT values of the H1RNA gene, reasonably analysed on a selected set of samples, clearly showed that the observed trends of SARS-CoV-2 cycle threshold for the N protein-encoding gene (CT N) values are not related to the swabbing procedure as CT values of the H1RNA are constant
Summary
Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, almost 137,866,311 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 cases were reported globally [1] (up to 16 April 2021). In Italy, a total of 3809,193 million cases were confirmed (up to 16 April 2021), with 115,557 reported fatalities [2]. In order to support the national healthcare system, the Ministry of Health appointed the Istituti Zooprofilattici Sperimentali, public health veterinary institutes, to test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, naso-pharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs (NNS). Starting from 16 March 2020, swabs collected in the province of Teramo from Abruzzo, a central region of Italy, are regularly tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2. In a preliminary study conducted in 2020 [4], the mean of cycle threshold for the N protein-encoding gene (CT N) values of the first swab from each positive patient tested from March to May 2020, was analyzed. We observed a trend of CT increasing from a median value of 27.9 (±6.0 CT median value of standard deviation) to 33.43
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