A single-tube method for determining the type of a hepatitis C virus and the HCV viral load in a sample, if present, the method comprising: a) amplifying a portion of the HCV genome from the sample via asymmetric RT-PCR, thereby producing a limiting amplicon strand and an excess amplicon strand; b) hybridizing said limiting amplicon strand with a TaqMan-type quantitation probe and quantifying the amount of said limiting amplicon strand; c) hybridizing said excess amplicon strand with an HCV typing probe to form a target hybridization complex, wherein: i) said HCV typing probe is complementary or partially complementary to a nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome; ii) said nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome shows sequence heterogeneity among at least five HCV genotypes or at least six HCV subtypes; and, iii) hybridization complexes comprising said HCV typing probe and said nucleotide sequence of the at least five HCV genotypes or the at least six HCV subtypes have a distinguishing hybridization property that differentiates each of the HCV genotypes or HCV subtypes; d) measuring said distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex; and, e) correlating said measured distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex with an HCV genotype or subtype, based on the distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex. a) amplifying a portion of the HCV genome from the sample via asymmetric RT-PCR, thereby producing a limiting amplicon strand and an excess amplicon strand; b) hybridizing said limiting amplicon strand with a TaqMan-type quantitation probe and quantifying the amount of said limiting amplicon strand; c) hybridizing said excess amplicon strand with an HCV typing probe to form a target hybridization complex, wherein: i) said HCV typing probe is complementary or partially complementary to a nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome; ii) said nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome shows sequence heterogeneity among at least five HCV genotypes or at least six HCV subtypes; and, iii) hybridization complexes comprising said HCV typing probe and said nucleotide sequence of the at least five HCV genotypes or the at least six HCV subtypes have a distinguishing hybridization property that differentiates each of the HCV genotypes or HCV subtypes; i) said HCV typing probe is complementary or partially complementary to a nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome; ii) said nucleotide sequence within an HCV genome shows sequence heterogeneity among at least five HCV genotypes or at least six HCV subtypes; and, iii) hybridization complexes comprising said HCV typing probe and said nucleotide sequence of the at least five HCV genotypes or the at least six HCV subtypes have a distinguishing hybridization property that differentiates each of the HCV genotypes or HCV subtypes; d) measuring said distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex; and, e) correlating said measured distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex with an HCV genotype or subtype, based on the distinguishing hybridization property of the target hybridization complex.