covid-19: molecular diagnostics overview

The last day of 2019 delivered the first report to the world health organization (who) about a group of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in wuhan, china. subsequent investigations identified the new comer, a novel coronavirus related to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (sars-cov) and thus was termed as sars-cov-2. being very contagious, the new virus led the era of “covid-19” which is the acronym of “coronavirus disease 2019,” evoking an imminent threat to global health security with unprecedented devastating challenges to human kind. in this article, we provide a molecular overview on the sars-cov-2 virus and summarize tremendous efforts that have been made to develop a rapid confirmatory diagnostic test for covid-19. the diagnostic performances of the available tests are analyzed based on the best current information from the early research.