No novel coronaviruses identified in a large collection of human nasopharyngeal specimens using family-wide CODEHOP-based primers

Novel viruses might be responsible for numerous disease cases with unknown etiology. In this study, we screened 1800 nasopharyngeal samples from adult outpatients with respiratory disease symptoms and healthy individuals. We employed a reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assay and CODEHOP-based primers (CT12-mCODEHOP) previously developed to recognize known and unknown corona- and toroviruses. The CT12-mCODEHOP assay detected 42.0 % (29/69) of samples positive for human coronaviruses (HCoV), including HCoV-229 (1/16), HCoV-NL63 (9/17), and HCoV-OC43 (19/36), and additionally HCoV-HKU1 (3), which was not targeted by the diagnostic real-time PCR assays. No other coronaviruses were identified in the analyzed samples.