Background: To curb the spread of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, the world needs diagnostic systems capable of rapid detection and quantification of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Many biomedical companies are rising to the challenge and developing COVID-19 diagnostics. In the last few months, some of these diagnostics have become commercially available for healthcare workers and clinical laboratories. However, the diagnostic technologies have specific limitations and reported several false-positive and false-negative cases, especially during the early stages of infection.
Aim: This article aims to review recent developments in the field of COVID-19 diagnostics based on molecular technologies and analyze their clinical performance data.
Key concepts: The literature survey and performance-based analysis of the commercial and pre-commercial molecular diagnostics address several questions and issues related to the limitations of current technologies and highlight future research and development challenges to enable timely, rapid, low-cost, and accurate diagnosis of emerging infectious diseases.
Keywords: COVID-19; Clinical sensitivity; In vitro diagnostics; Point-of-care; Real-time RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2.
© 2020 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Cairo University.