Last few decades, viruses are a real menace to human safety. Therefore, the rapid identification of viruses should be one of the best ways to prevent an outbreak and important implications for medical healthcare. The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus which belongs to the single-stranded, positive-strand RNA viruses. The pandemic dimension spread of COVID-19 poses a severe threat to the health and lives of seven billion people worldwide. There is a growing urgency worldwide to establish a point-of-care device for the rapid detection of COVID-19 to prevent subsequent secondary spread. Therefore, the need for sensitive, selective, and rapid diagnostic devices plays a vital role in selecting appropriate treatments and to prevent the epidemics. During the last decade, electrochemical biosensors have emerged as reliable analytical devices and represent a new promising tool for the detection of different pathogenic viruses. This review summarizes the state of the art of different virus detection with currently available electrochemical detection methods. Moreover, this review discusses different fabrication techniques, detection principles, and applications of various virus biosensors. Future research also looks at the use of electrochemical biosensors regarding a potential detection kit for the rapid identification of the COVID-19.

Graphical abstract

Most recently, an outbreak of severe pneumonia caused by the infection of SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, imposes serious threats to public health. Upon infecting host cells, coronaviruses assemble a multi-subunit RNA-synthesis complex of viral non-structural proteins (nsp) responsible for the replication and transcription of the viral genome. Therefore, the role and inhibition of nsp12 are indispensable. A cryo-EM structure of RdRp from SARs-CoV-2 was used to identify novel drugs from Northern South African medicinal compounds database (NANPDB) by using computational virtual screening and molecular docking approaches. Considering Remdesivir as the control, 42 compounds were shortlisted to have docking score better than Remdesivir. The top 5 hits were validated by using molecular dynamics simulation approach and free energy calculations possess strong inhibitory properties than the Remdesivir. Thus, this study paved a way for designing novel drugs by decoding the architecture of an important enzyme and its inhibition with compounds from natural resources. This disclosing of necessary knowledge regarding the screening and the identification of top hits could help to design effective therapeutic candidates against the coronaviruses and design robust preventive measurements.