Diagnosis of COVID-19, vitality of emerging technologies and preventive measures

Abstract

Coronavirus diseases-2019 (COVID-19) is becoming increasing serious and major threat to public health concerns. As a matter of fact, timely testing enhances the life-saving judgments on treatment and isolation of COVID-19 infected individuals at possible earliest stage which ultimately suppresses spread of infectious diseases. Many government and private research institutes and manufacturing companies are striving to develop reliable tests for prompt quantification of SARS-CoV-2. In this review, we summarize existing diagnostic methods as manual laboratory-based nucleic acid assays for COVID-19 and their limitations. Moreover, vitality of rapid and point of care serological tests together with emerging biosensing technologies has been discussed in details. Point of care tests with characteristics of rapidity, accurateness, portability, low cost and requiring non-specific devices possess great suitability in COVID-19 diagnosis and detection. Besides, this review also sheds light on several preventive measures to track and manage disease spread in current and future outbreaks of diseases.

Keywords: Biosensors; Developing methods; Existing techniques; Preventive measures; SARS-CoV-2.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

(A) Ideal structure of SARS-COV-2 which caused COVID-19 outbreak, (B) Illustration of SARS-CoV-2 infection with common symptoms, (C) Various methods for clinical sampling. Redrawn with permission from .

Fig. 2

Schematic RT-LAMP-LFB design for COVID-19 diagnosis, (A) Description of LAMP assay, (B) Mechanism of RT-LAMP-LFB assay, (C) Principle of LFB to visualize the RT-LAMP product, (D) Primer design of COVID-19 mRT-MCDA-LFB assay. .

Fig. 3

(A) SPR sensorgram of the surface functionalization. After EDC-NHS activation of the AffiCoat surface, the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 (rN) was bound to the surface of the SPR chip and remaining activated sites were passivated with ethanolamine. Reprinted with permission from Jean-Francois et al. , (B) Scheme showing the process of functionalization of colloidal Au NPs (a) and TEM micrograph of Au NPs conjugated with the particular antibody of SARS-CoV-2 (b). Reproduced with permission from , (C) Schematic illustration of photothermal plasmonic biosensor. Reproduced with permission from , (D) Representation of label-free SARS-CoV-2 pseudo-virus detection using nanoplasmonic sensor. Reproduced with permission from .

Fig. 4

(A) Schematic illustration of FET sensor to detect SARS-CoV-2 virus from infected person (a), Different amperometric current signal for normal specimen and patient specimen (b,c), Real-time monitoring the clinical sample of COVID-19 patient using FET (d) corresponding dose-dependent response curve (e). Reproduced with permission from , (B) Representation of protein functionalized Gr-FET immunosensors (a) with electrical source-drain sheet conductance G vs reference potential (b). Reprinted with permission from Wangyang et al. .

Fig. 5

(A) Schematic illustration of the assay developed on this genosensor, and square wave voltammetry curves in the absence (first curve) and presence (after first curve) of different concentrations of biotinylated targets. Reproduced with permission from , (B) Scheme representing electrochemical sensing platform for the detection of viral RNA to diagnose COVID-19 infection including whole process from sample collection to digital electrochemical output. Reproduced with permission from , (C) An electrochemical podium demonstrating magnetic beads-based assay for SARS-CoV-2 detection in untreated saliva. Reproduced with permission from , (D) Flow chart diagram showing Co-functionalized TiO₂ nanotube (Co-TNT) based electrochemical sensor to detect SARS-CoV-2. Reproduced with permission from .

Fig. 6

(A) Flow chart diagram showing sources and pathways of SARS-CoV-2 in water systems and preventive measures. Reproduced with permission from , (B) Schematic diagram demonstrating different steps involved in WBE such as wastewater sampling, RNA extraction, and RT-PCR detection of genetic material for surveillance and prediction of contagious disease hotspots. Reproduced with permission from .