Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

Current Diagnostic approaches

At the time of MERS & SARS outbreaks, effective diagnostic tools were used for the exact investigation. Nowadays, it is necessary to develop a specific test for COVID-19 disease. According to the CDC, they have recommended the collection of upper respiratory nasopharyngeal samples for diagnostic tests. The CDC detection tests target the N region of and made up of 1 test for Beta coronaviruses and 2 unique probes for SARS-CoV-2. Once both got positive results, the sample is tested against specific COVID-19 RDRp. Moreover, chest CT scans also have been used to detect and analyze the abnormalities present in the lung in SARS-CoV-2 infection. but not in all cases may be perfectly detected with chest CT scans. That is why it is necessary to do molecular tests and check travel history as well. Hence, the diagnostic approaches of molecular treatment will help in the analysis and curing COVID-19 effectively.

The broad majority of the drugs used for COVID-19 across the world comes under any of the following classifications of drugs:

• Anti-viral drugs: The anti-viral drugs come under normally 3 mechanisms in the serine protease inhibition, virus-viral replication inhibition, and ion-channel inhibition. Previous outbreaks of the viral infection such as SARS-CoV, Ebola Virus as well as MERS cured with this category of drugs.
• Anti-malarial drugs: These types of drugs are deleted gradually from the host remaining for a long time after intake. And the disadvantage of anti-malarial drugs is that they develop resistance for any drugs that comes under this category. Chloroquine drug is an example of an anti-malarial drug that has shown potential in the treatment of avian influenza as well as they have anti-viral immune-modulating properties.
• Anti-HIV drugs: These types of drugs based on their specific targets like retro-transcription, proteolytic processing, reverse transcription, and viral cell fusion. Lopinavir or Ritonavir is a protease inhibitor that is always going for the HIV virus. These drugs stop the production of viral proteins by damaging the proteolytic processing by copying its structure as a peptide cleaved by HIV protease.