Point-of-Care Testing of COVID-19: Current Status, Clinical Impact, and Future Therapeutic Perspectives

The effective management of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic depends on bedrock rapid and accurate testing to enable promptness in quarantining, contact tracing, epidemiologic characterization, evaluating vaccine response, strategic decision-making. In this context, point-of-care (POC) tests are utmost importance as they facilitate decentralized without much instrumentation technical expertise. review describes current status POC COVID-19 three broad categories: molecular, antigen, antibody. advantages, limitations, adaption each types discussed while highlighting their clinical impact real-world settings. role for screening, diagnosis, surveillance has been highlighted, focusing recent advances field. difference between at-home is elaborating necessity latter. A spotlight variants performance provided. hospitals with regard improving therapeutic options, patient flow, enhancing infection control measures, early recruitment patients into trials discussed. Finally, future perspectives that will aid research community development or any infectious disease, general, presented. Overall, we believe can benefit it (i) presents a comprehensive understanding methods (ii) highlights features required transform developed during past year diagnostics, (iii) provides insights address unmet challenges