Background: The Covid 19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread rapidly resulting in major socioeconomic impact globally. The infectivity, lack of effctive drugs and vaccines, and potentially large asymptomatic transmission have made the management and control of the disease extremely challenging. Although the primary control strategy is to isolate infected patients, the duration of the isolation period is poorly understood as viral RNA has been found to be persisting for prolonged durations. Recently many authors have studied the role of presence of subgenomic mRNA patient specimens to determine the infectivity of the patient. In our study we detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 Envelope subgenomic mRNA in patients RT-PCR positive for SARS-CoV-2. These included symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Aim: To detect the presence of E sg mRNA in SARS-CoV-2 RT PCR positive nasopharyngeal specimens. Materials and Methods: 58 consecutive RT-PCR positive samples were collected over a period of 10 days. These were further subjected to conventional RT-PCR testing for E subgenomic mRNA. Results: 22/58 tested positive for presence of sg mRNA. Out of these 22 positive for sg mRNA, 19 were symptomatic patients. We further compared the presence of sg mRNA in symptomatic cases at ≤ 5 days of symptom onset to testing time (STT) and in asymptomatic cases at ≤ 5 days from first Covid RT PCR positive test. There were total 44 samples including both groups, out of which 19/22 symptomatic patients showed presence of sg mRNA and 3/22 of asymptomatic showed presence of sg mRNA. Conclusion: In our study we observed that sg mRNA is detected mostly in symptomatic patients. However the limitation of our study is that a small sample size has been tested and cases have not been followed up. Large observational studies to detect sg mRNA in Covid 19 patients will help in validating its role in the disease process. Moreover the asymptomatic cases that show presence of subgenomic mRNA should be followed up longitudinally to observe whether they remain asymptomatic or develop symptoms subsequently.