ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused unparalleled global threat in terms of public health and economic loss. To date, there is no effective way of treating this disease, and the only way to control this disease is the extensive diagnosis of COVID-19 symptomatic patients and isolate them from the healthy population and treat them with appropriate medicine. There is a requirement of a global standard diagnosis method to quickly control this pandemic disease, which should be specific, easy to use, and inexpensive and requires least instrumentation at point-of-care testing (POCT). Serology-based tests are popular, inexpensive, and easy to use to diagnose COVID-19 patients, but they lack sensitivity at lower inoculum concentrations and may indicate false negatives which possess a major threat in spreading this pandemic disease. To avoid this issue, nucleic acid-based tests are more specific and sensitive to diagnose COVID-19 patients. However, it has some limitations such as a low sample throughput, expensive reagents, an extensive time, and requirement of costly quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction instruments. To overcome this limitation, the latest CRISPR-based detection methods coupled with allied isothermal nucleic acid amplification methods such as loop-mediated isothermal amplification would provide inexpensive, quick, accurate, and easy ways of diagnosing a large number of populations at POCT. Here, we discuss some of the promising CRISPR-based assays which have the potential to transform COVID-19 diagnosis globally and curb this pandemic disease in the shortest possible time. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.