Strategies for laboratory detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2: a review

Nowadays, the global pandemic of coronovirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has brought a severe impact on medical environment of the world because the lack of specific treatment and early detection of SARS-CoV-2 for timely diagnosis, isolation and registration of COVID-19 cases has become an effective mean to contain the pandemic. The sensitivity of COVID-19 case diagnosis is poor based on clinical manifestations and signs of the disease, so physicians need to identify infected and non-infected persons according laboratory detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test or other indicators. The study reviewed genomic characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and its related detection principles. At different stages of COVID-19, the performance of different tests varied greatly. Real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) based nucleic acid test is sensitive in the early and middle stage of SARS-CoV-2 infection, but serological detection, which may identify the late stage of the infection, could be used as an auxiliary detection to identify nucleic acid-negative but suspected infections. To avoid ‘false negative’ resulting in misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis, the multi-index detections should be used in laboratory detections to make up for the deficiency of a singular test.