A PROCESS AND A KIT FOR DETECTION OF CORONAVIRUS AND OTHER RESPIRATORY VIRUSES

The present invention is directed towards a process of RT-PCR based diagnosis of SARS-CoV2 and other related respiratory viruses without storing and transporting the naso-pharyngeal and oro-pharyngeal swabs in Viral Testing Media directly after extracting the viral particles from the swabs in a suitable buffer, and using these extracts directly, without involving any steps of RNA isolation/extraction, for RT-PCR based diagnosis of SARS-CoV2. The present invention is also directed towards kits for time and cost-efficient diagnosis of SARS-CoV2 and other related respiratory viruses at efficacies matching or better than the efficacies of the gold-standard RT-PCR method starting from VTM transported swabs for diagnosing the same. The present invention also directs to variant process wherein the viral particles eluted in suitable buffers are further subjected to the conventional steps of RNA extraction before qRT-PCR.