Conclusion
Our assay can enhance the identification of genotypic variants of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, especially in low-resource settings where NGS and Sanger sequencing techniques are difficult to reach out. This rapid barcoding method may assist to reveal disease epidemiology, patient management and protein-based drug designing, and also contribute to modify future national policy, and vaccine development. A more cost-effective one-step procedure based on modified tetra ARMS assay (T-ARMS) is under development by our group that will considerably reduce the labor and cost further.