Efficient and rapid detection of viruses plays an extremely
important role in disease prevention, diagnosis, and
environmental monitoring. Early screening of viral infection
among the population has the potential to combat the spread of
infection. However, the traditional methods of virus detection
being used currently, such as plate culturing and quantitative
RT-PCR, give promising results, but they are time-consuming and
require expert analysis and costly equipment and reagents;
therefore, they are not affordable by people in low
socio-economic groups in developing countries. Further, mass or
bulk testing chosen by many governments to tackle the pandemic
situation has led to severe shortages of testing kits and
reagents and hence are affecting the demand and supply chain
drastically. We tried to include all the reported current
scenario-based biosensors such as electrochemical, optical, and
microfluidics, which have the potential to replace mainstream
diagnostic methods and therefore could pave the way to combat
COVID-19. Apart from this, we have also provided information on
commercially available biosensors for detection of SARS-CoV-2
along with the challenges in development of better diagnostic
approaches. It is therefore expected that the content of this
review will help researchers to design and develop more
sensitive advanced commercial biosensor devices for early
diagnosis of viral infection, which can open up avenues for
better and more specific therapeutic outcomes.