Combating the progression of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 infectious Disease: Current state and future prospects in molecular diagnostic and drug discovery

Kumar, Arbind; Sharma, Aashish; Tirpude, Narendra Vijay; Thakur, Sharad; Kumar, Sanjay

A highly infectious and life-threatening virus originated from Wuhan, China in late 2019 and rapidly spread all over the world. This novel virus belongs to coronavirus family and is associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), causing respiratory disease known as COVID-19. In March 2020, WHO has declared COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Morbidity and mortality are swiftly rising day by day with the situation more severe and fatal for the co-morbid population. Many COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic, but they are silently spreading the infection. There is a need for proper screening of infected patients to prevent the epidemic transmission of disease and also for the early curative interventions to reduce the risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19 illness. To date, the diagnostic assays fall under two categories, molecular detection of viral genetic material by realtime RT-polymerase chain reaction and serological test, which rely on detecting antiviral antibodies. Unfortunately, there are no effective prophylactics and therapeutics available against COVID-19. However, few drugs are showing promising antiviral activity against it and presently are referred for the clinical trials, albeit FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for emergency use of few drugs in the manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This review gives an insight into current progress, challenges and future prospects of laboratory detection methods of COVID-19 and also highlights the clinical stage of the major proposed or evidence based drugs/vaccines recommended against the novel SARS-CoV-2 pandemic virus.