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. 2020;4(2):96-107.
doi: 10.46701/BG.2020022020120.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): diagnosis and prognosis

Affiliations

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): diagnosis and prognosis

Xueying Wang et al. Blood Genom. 2020.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic with a high rate of transmission. Currently, there is a lack of vaccines and specific drugs for this newly-emerged virus. Timely diagnosis and treatment, as well as isolation of patients and virus carriers, contribute to the effective prevention and control of this epidemic. This review focuses on early stage COVID-19 diagnosis methods and strategies, highlighting the guiding role of laboratory indicators on treatment strategy formulation, and prognosis assessments.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; etiological examination; laboratory examination; nucleic acid test.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Diagnostic flow chart.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Stage of COVID-19 development.
The most important factor is that a large number of cytokines are released in the process of clearing the viruses, causing cytokine storm.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Coagulation index changes with the develop ment of the disease.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and representative viruses of the genus Betacoronavirus.
Adopted from Lu R. et al[33]. Phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and its closely related reference genomes revealed that SARS-CoV-2 belonged to the subgenus Sarbecovirus. The ten SARS-CoV-2 strains from Wuhan and the two bat-derived SARS-like strains from eastern China (bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21) formed a clade, while SARS-CoV-2 strains from humans and genetically similar SARS-like coronaviruses from bats of southwestern China formed another clade.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5. Phylogenetic network of SARS-CoV-2 subtypes.
Adopted from Forster P. et al[39], using 160 SARS-CoV-2 genomes. The notch on the links represents a mutated nucleotide position, and the circle areas are proportional to the number of taxa. Using the bat virus as an outgroup resulted in the root of the network being placed in the “A” cluster of lineages. The network showed that ancestral viral genomes exist alongside their newly mutated daughter genomes. Cluster B is derived from A and most genomes in B cluster were sampled from Wuhan, from other parts of China, and from adjacent Asian countries. Cluster C derived from its parent Cluster B, but it contained no genomes from mainland Chinese samples.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6. Schematic presentation of the SARS-CoV-2 genome organization.
Adopted from Kim D. et al[40]. The representative SARS-CoV-2 full-length genomic RNA (29 903 nt) also serves as an mRNA. ORF1a and ORF1b are translated. Nine major subgenomic RNAs are produced. In order to provide better visualization, the sizes of the boxes representing small accessory proteins are bigger than the actual size of the ORF. The black box indicates the leader sequence.

References

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