PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Matthew Cotten
AU  - Dan Lule Bugembe
AU  - Pontiano Kaleebu
AU  - My V.T. Phan
TI  - Alternate primers for whole-genome SARS-CoV-2 sequencing
AID  - 10.1101/2020.10.12.335513
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.10.12.335513
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/09/2020.10.12.335513.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/09/2020.10.12.335513.full
AB  - As the world is struggling to control the novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), there is an urgency to develop effective control measures. Essential information is encoded in the virus genome sequence with accurate and complete SARS-CoV-2 sequences essential for tracking the movement and evolution of the virus and for guiding efforts to develop vaccines and antiviral drugs. While there is unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 sequencing efforts globally, approximately 19 to 43% of the genomes generated monthly are gapped, reducing their information content. The current study documents the genome gap frequencies and their positions in the currently available data and provides an alternative primer set and a sequencing scheme to help improve the quality and coverage of the genomes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.