Table 2.

Characteristics of the five kits used for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 genomic targets.

	Parameters	Kit-A	Kit-B	Kit-C	Kit-D °	Kit-E
GENES	Gene E	x	x	x		x
	RdRP	x		x		x
	Gene n	x			x
	orf1ab		x
INSTRUMENTS	ABI 7500		x	x		x
	LC 480		x	x
	Montania		x
	BioRad CFX96Dx	x	x	x	x	x
	Rotorgene 6000		x
	Q-Qiagen		x
	Atila PG 9600
	ABI QuantStudio 5DX
	AriaDx			x
	Mic			x
KIT FEATURES	LoD	100 copies/rxn	25 copies/rxn	3 copies/rxn	1 copie/rxn	50 copies/rxn
	Precision	CV ≤ 5%	not declared	CV ≤ 5%	not declared	CV ≤ 5%
	Treshold Ct	≤40 positive ≤40 IC	≤30 PC ≤32 IC	≤34 IC	≤25 positive	≤40 positive
	Number of total cycles	45	35	45	35	45
	Time	~1 h 30 min	~1 h	~1 h 30 min	20 min	~1 h 30 min
	RNA Volume	8 μL	10 μL	10 μL	5 μL	5 μL OM1 5 μL OM2
	Final Volume of reaction	25 μL	25 μL	30 μL	25 μL	25
	Volume of Internal Control	10 μL in the starting sample	5 μL when starting with extraction; 0.2 μL when spiked in RNA	1 μL in 6 µL elution volume	Not included	Not included

° Ionebio (Kit-D; http://www.ionebio.com (accessed on 4 February 2021)) is an isothermal-based method which determines as positive all samples with a Cycle thershold (Ct) ≤ 25. This kit works as a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method; CV: coefficient of variation; IC: internal control; OM: mastermix; PC: positive control. Kit E: https://www.theglobalfund.org/media/9629/covid19_diagnosticproducts_list_en.pdf (accessed on 4 February 2021).