GenMark Diagnostics, Inc. announced that its ePlex Respiratory Pathogen Panel 2 (RP2) is predicted to detect known SARS-CoV-2 variants currently in circulation. The identified SARS-CoV-2 variant strains include multiple mutations with the majority occurring in the spike protein, or S gene region and additional mutations found in the nucleoprotein region, or N gene. The ePlex RP2 Panel targets two unique regions of the N gene; the currently identified N gene mutations for the variants listed above are found outside of the sequence region targeted by the SARS-CoV-2 assays on the ePlex RP2 Panel and therefore the following variant strains currently in circulation are predicted to be detected based on the in silico analysis: B.1.1.7 (UK), B.1.351 (South Africa), P.1 (Brazil), COH.20G/677H and COH.20G/501Y (Ohio, USA) and B.1.429 (California, USA). GenMark will continue to update the list of variants detected by the ePlex RP2 Panel. The ePlex RP2 Panel provides results for more than 20 viruses and bacteria that cause common and often serious respiratory infections, including COVID-19, flu, bronchitis, pneumonia and the common cold. With less than one minute of laboratory hands-on time and a total run time of less than two hours, the ePlex RP2 Panel is easy to use, rapid, and can be run in a broad array of hospital and reference lab settings.