Moleküler Biyoloji ve Genetik , Prof. Dr. Mustafa SOLAK, Editör, Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi, Ankara, ss.661-686, 2023
After being isolated in Wuhan in December 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has rapidly spread all over the
world, causing a major pandemic. It is easily transmitted from person to person by close contact
in poorly ventilated indoor spaces. It mainly causes upper respiratory tract infection and
pneumonia. The symptoms in the infected patients are similar to other respiratory tract infections
and clinical distinction cannot be made. SARS-CoV-2 causes mild disease in 80% of patients,
severe disease in 15% and critical disease in 5%. Life-threatening complications such as cytokine
activation, ARDS, thrombosis, and sepsis may develop during the course of the disease. Severe
disease and complications are common in patients over 65 years, patients with comorbid diseases
and immunosupression. From the start of the pandemia,novel and most sensitive and specific
methods are started to be used in order to detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nucleic acid
amplification tests (NAATs), antibody and antigen tests are developed for diagnosis of COVID19. Real time RT-PCR method is the gold standard technique for rapid diagnosis of COVID-19
infection. At the same time, these methods have low limit of detection. The rapid molecular
diagnostics tests which are feasible at the bedside, are also rapid, high sensitivity, and low-budget
technologies. Rapid and correct diagnosis of the COVID-19 infection provides early treatment
and control of the infection in a predictable way. Also, detecting protective precautions is crucial
for the prognosis of COVID-19. Therewithal, newly developed test's performance comparison
and novel variant detection are necessary studies for the future.