Abstract

Background: COVID has caused a worldwide pandemic and brought the countries to a halt. It is not only a disease of the respiratory system but the entire body. RT-PCR remains the main stay of diagnosis for COVID, limited study has been done in terms of usability of cycle threshold (CT) values for understanding the severity of the disease. This study was done to find association between CT values, clinical features and biomarkers
Materials and Methods: this is an observational study done between November 2022 to October 2022. A total of 200 cases were studied. RT-PCR was performed using Quant studio 12K flex system. Biomarker estimation was done on Architect c8000
Results: A total of 200 cases studied. 43.28% cases had low CT value in E gene and 40.79% cases in RdRp gene. The predominant symptom noted in our study is breathlessness. No statistical correlation was made between CT values and clinical symptoms and also no statistical correlation was made between biomarkers.
Conclusion: COVID RT-PCR is the gold standard diagnostic method but the viral load cannot be used as a prognostic marker because the sample collection technique is not standardised across the board and also the quantity of sample obtained during nasopharyngeal swabbing varies. Further studies and establishment of standardised protocols can bring about a usability for the CT values.