LAUSR

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) variant of concern (VoC) Omicron (B.1.1.529) has rapidly spread around the world, presenting a new threat to global public human health. Due to the large number of mutations accumulated by SARS‐CoV‐2 Omicron, concerns have emerged over potentially reduced diagnostic accuracy of reverse‐transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT‐qPCR), the gold standard diagnostic test for diagnosing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). Thus, we aimed to assess the impact of the currently endemic Omicron sublineages BA.4 and BA.5 on the integrity and sensitivity of RT‐qPCR assays used for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) diagnosis via in silico analysis. We employed whole genome sequencing data and evaluated the potential for false negatives or test failure due to mismatches between primers/probes and the Omicron VoC viral genome.