Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Evaluation of the AMP SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test in a hospital setting
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of a broad clinical spectrum known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China (Zhu et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020). Within a short time, a worldwide spread led to the current pandemic that will presumably remain the leading infectious disease topic in 2021 (WHO, 2020a).Evaluation of a novel antigen-based rapid detection test for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 in respiratory samples
Since the first reported cases in December 2019, the rapidly emerging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been causing tremendous public health challenges worldwide (WHO, 2020a). Timely detection and isolation of cases and their contacts are considered crucial to help curtail this unprecedented pandemic (Nguyen et al., 2020). This strategy relies on robust, rapid, and easy-to-perform diagnostic tools that can be used to test large numbers of samples in a short period of time.Ascertainment rate of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Japan
As of March 1, 2020, a total of 58 countries had reported at least one confirmed case of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and the cumulative number of deaths had reached 2977 persons across the world (WHO, 2020). To achieve appropriate countermeasures, it is vital to understand the current epidemiological situations of the COVID-19 epidemic.The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak: What we know
Coronaviruses (CoVs), a large family of single-stranded RNA viruses, can infect animals and also humans, causing respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic, and neurologic diseases (Weiss and Leibowitz, 2013). As the largest known RNA viruses, CoVs are further divided into four genera: alpha-coronavirus, beta- coronavirus, gamma-coronavirus and delta-coronavirus (Yang and Leibowitz, 2015). To date, there have been six human coronaviruses (HCoVs) identified, including the alpha-CoVs HCoVs-NL63 and HCoVs-229E and the beta-CoVs HCoVs-OC43, HCoVs-HKU1, severe acute respiratory syndrome-CoV (SARS-CoV) (Drosten et al., 2020), and Middle East respiratory syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) (Zaki et al., 2012).
