Tracking the pandemic through molecular and sequencing tools: a story of SARS- CoV-2 over five years, lessons learned, and further directions.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to public health surveillance frameworks. In response, the Provincial Public Health Laboratory (PPHL), Sindh, contributed to early detection, large-scale diagnostic testing, and genomic surveillance from February 2020 to June 2025. This study reviews five years of PPHL's role in COVID-19 diagnosis, variant tracking, and public health response in Sindh. Diagnostic data included positive cases, while genomic epidemiology was assessed using commercial RT-PCR kits and in-house S-gene dropout assays as proxy tools for variant detection, supplemented by whole genome sequencing (WGS). A total of 194,415 specimens were tested, with five major peaks observed: wild-type (33.3%), Alpha (26.9%), Delta (22.0%), and Omicron (23.1%). WGS was performed

SUBMITTER: Khan S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12751935 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature