SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19): New Discoveries and Current Challenges

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has today multiplied globally and various governments are attempting to stop the outbreak of the disease escalation into a worldwide health crisis. At this juncture, readiness, candor, clarity, and partaking of data are of paramount importance to speed up factual evaluation and starting pattern control activities, including serendipitous findings. Owing to the involvement of COVID-19, many facts regarding virulence, pathogenesis, and the real viral infection source and/or transmission mode still need to be addressed. The infected patients often present clinical symptoms with fever, dyspnea, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, and dry cough, as well as pulmonary, infiltrates on imaging. Extensive measures to decrease person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 are being implemented to prevent, recognize, and control the current outbreak as it is very similar to SARS-CoV in its clinical spectrum, epidemiology, and pathogenicity. In response to this fatal disease and disruptive outbreak, it is extremely vital to expedite the drug development process to treat the disease and vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19 that would help us defeat this pandemic expeditiously. This paper sums up and unifies the study of virological aspects, disease transmission, clinically administered techniques, therapeutics options, managements, future directions, designing of vaccines, and news dissemination pertaining to COVID-19.

Detection Methods of COVID-19

“…2,3 Symptoms of this disease include a headache, sore throat, cough, fever, and loss of smell or taste. 3 The disease is caused by SARS-CoV-2 and asseverated to be transmitted from person to person by multiple means, including aerosols, fomites, and droplets. 4 Fever, cough, and shortness of breath are the most important symptoms in infected individuals for the diagnosis of COVID-19.…”

Anti-COVID Drugs: Repurposing Existing Drugs Or Search for New Complex entities, Strategies and Perspectives

“…A great number of reports have recently been published to address the possibilities for repurposing antiviral drugs and developing new therapeutic agents and methods against SARS-CoV-2 [ 62 , 63 ]. All the concepts presented in these and many other available publications show that combining two ideas – repurposing and design of multitarget drugs – represents a valid approach.…”

Nano- and biosensors for the detection of SARS-CoV-2: challenges and opportunities

“…importantly, the S protein plays a critical role in viral attachment, fusion, entry, and transmission. [1][2][3] It includes an N-terminal S1 subunit responsible for virus-receptor binding and a C-terminal S2 subunit responsible for virus-cell membrane fusion. S1 is further divided into an N-terminal domain and a receptor-binding domain.…”

“…Importantly, rapid and sensitive diagnosis and detection are urgently needed for epidemiological measurement, infection control, antiviral treatment and vaccine research. 2,7 Considerable efforts have also been made to detect and prevent various patterns of community transmission (Figure 1). Generally, diverse diagnostic and testing kits/assays such as real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based immunoassays, thermal screening guns, and point-of-care (POC), have been employed or under further investigations for detecting SARS-CoV-2, and characterization of cellular and antibody responses to viral infections.…”

“…But, these methods have some drawbacks and 5 restrictions/limitations, including high cost, non-specificity, false positive/negative responses, long duration of testing, and labor intensive. 2,8 Figure 1. Some important biosensing methods and surface analysis techniques with potentials for detecting SARS-CoV-2…”