• Narayani Maharjan, Niresh Thapa, Bibek Pun Magar, Muna Maharjan, and Jiancheng Tu.
• Program & Department of Clinical Laboratory Medicine, Center for Gene Diagnosis, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China and Department of Molecular Laboratory, Karnali Academy of Health Sciences, Jumla, Nepal.
• JNMA J Nepal Med Assoc. 2021 May 25; 59 (237): 464-467.

IntroductionThe emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 pandemic is critically challenging the whole world. The real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction is the most widely used confirmatory test for COVID-19 detection. This study aimed to find out the prevalence of COVID-19 infection detected by gold standard reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction test in a tertiary care center of Nepal.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Karnali Academy of Health Sciences from May to August 2020 after taking ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences, Jumla. Convenient sampling was used. A total of 361 participants enrolled in this study who have done real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction for screening of COVID-19 infection. Also, a designated questionnaire was obtained from persons with a travel history and close contact. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software was used for the statistical analysis. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data.ResultsThe prevalence of COVID-19 was 167 (46.3%) (95% Confidence Interval= 41.16-51.44) by real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction test. Out of 361 samples, 339 (93.9%) were male and 22 (6%) were female. The highest frequency of the participants belongs to the age groups of 20-40 years.ConclusionsThe findings showed a high prevalence of COVID-19 detected by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction test. Further studies are necessary to improve the precision of prevalence estimations.

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