Detection of the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by rapid serodiagnostic assays
Scientific notes
24/02/20
On 31 December 2019, WHO was informed of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. The coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) was identified as the causative virus by Chinese authorities on 7 January. As part of WHO’s response to the outbreak, the R&D has been activated to accelerate diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for this novel coronavirus.
Figure 1. Coronavirus, 2020. Illustration by David S. Goodsell, RCSB Protein Data Bank doi: 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/goodsell-gallery-019
Regarding diagnostics, the new coronavirus COVID-19 (SARSCoV2 or SARSCoV(2019)) requires a rapid point of care diagnostics for use at the community level in order to accelerate the therapeutics and vaccines. Let´s have a look at the possible antigens which can be used in these rapid serodiagnosis test: