Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19): Emerging detection technologies and auxiliary analysis

Abstract

The ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic constitutes a new challenge for public health. Prevention and control of infection have become urgent and serious issues. To meet the clinical demand for higher accuracy of COVID‐19 detection, the development of fast and efficient methods represents an important step. The most common methods of COVID‐19 diagnosis, relying on real‐time fluorescent quantitative PCR(RT‐qPCR), computed tomography, and new‐generation sequencing technologies, have a series of advantages, especially for early diagnosis and screening. In addition, joint efforts of researchers all over the world have led to the development of other rapid detection methods with high sensitivity, ease of use, cost‐effectiveness, or allowing multiplex analysis based on technologies such as dPCR, ELISA, fluorescence immunochromatography assay, and the microfluidic detection chip method. The main goal of this review was to provide a critical discussion on the development and application of these different analytical methods, which based on etiology, serology, and molecular biology, as well as to compare their respective advantages and disadvantages. In addition to these methods, hematology and biochemistry, as well as auxiliary analysis based on pathological anatomy, ultrasonography, and cytokine detection, will help understand COVID‐19 pathogenesis. Together, these technologies may promote and open new windows to unravel issues surrounding symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID‐19 infections and improve clinical strategies toward reducing mortality.

Duplex One-Step RT-qPCR Assays for Simultaneous Detection of Genomic and Subgenomic RNAs of SARS-CoV-2 Variants

“…Many real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) assays and multiplexing kits (including triplex and quadruplex approaches) have been developed for SARS-CoV-2 detection [ 12 ]. A singleplex one-step RT-qPCR assay, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the detection of two different regions of SARS-CoV-2 genomic N ( gN ) [ 13 ] targets, is widely used [ 14 ].…”

Considerations for the selection of tests for SARS-CoV-2 molecular diagnostics

“…RT-PCR approaches that target multiple genes may overcome mutation based errors. This would potentially increase the amount of information gained from a single test, improve diagnostic specificity and reduce reagent usage and cost, as well as workload in clinical laboratories [ 17 , 95 , 96 ]. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 is continuously evolving and accumulating mutations, access to genome sequencing data to assist primers and probe design is an important requirement for assay developers and is likely to decrease false negative rates.…”

A 14+7 day quarantine period and a dual nucleic acid testing reagent strategy detect potentially indiscoverable Coronavirus disease 2019 infections in Xiamen, China

“…Multiplex PCR, which is similar to the dual reagents strategy and includes dual fluorescence multiplex-PCR, is a new technique based on traditional PCR. [22] Multiple PCR is based on mixing multiple primers and templates in one system to amplify different target bands, or mixing multiple primers and a single template to amplify the same template. [23] , [24] Multiplex PCR has shown higher efficiency than traditional PCR; however, due to a lack of system optimization, multi-reagents combined detection remains the most suitable detection method.…”