Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) also known as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak pandemic, there is a dire need of its detection accurately, rapidly, and cost effectively. The standard method of testing is real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) performed on respiratory samples such as nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swabs, sputum, lower respiratory tract aspirates, bronchoalveolar lavage, and nasopharyngeal wash/aspirate or nasal aspirate.

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designed RT-PCR assays and published a protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. (IDT) provides 2019-nCoV CDC primers-probes for the CDC assays.

To achieve rapidity, cost-effectiveness, minimization of reagent consumption, decrease of human errors, Lumex Instruments Canada has developed a Microchip RT-PCR COVID-19 detection system for upper respiratory tract samples (nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal and nasal swabs) that uses a pre-loaded microchip kit with the CDC recommended primers & probes lyophilized in the microchip for testing of the SARS-CoV-2, as research use only (RUO) application. The N1 and N2 primer-probes target regions within the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid gene (N), and HsRPP30 targets RNase P gene present in the human genome.