Abstract
December 2019, when the world was busy in welcoming New Year, unaware of the fact that the spark of COVID-19 has been ignited in Wuhan, China, will outbreak into wildfire to scorch the entire World. Nobody could have imagined that a single cell microorganism which even does not have any kind of cellular structure could be such a huge threat to human society. WHO and Public Health of Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) declared COVID-19 as highly contagious within a month after reporting of the first case on January 11, 2020. As it started spreading across the globe, it was declared as a pandemic by WHO on March 12, 2020. Several scientists of government and nongovernment organizations started working toward the prevention and treatment of this novel disease. Its high rate of transmission, global spread, and high mortality rate started raising concerns worldwide. But as the disease was spreading at an extremely high rate through person-to-person contact, the main challenge was to develop fast and accurate diagnostic methods. Diagnostic tests during such pandemic are crucial as they help to evaluate the effectiveness of the prevention, treatment, and population-wise containment measures. This chapter discusses the various clinical methods that are currently being used worldwide to detect the presence of deadly Corona virus. The procedures of the tests are detailed and are compared based on their specificity, sensitivity, limit of detection (LOD), reliability, and affordability.