The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is still ongoing. With the continuation of the epidemic, the SARS-CoV-2 genome is constantly mutating and evolving, producing more and more SARS-CoV-2 variants, which has brought severe pressure to the prevention and control of COVID-19. In view of the spread of COVID-19, it is extremely important to confirm the infection with SARS-CoV-2 and identify SARS-CoV-2 variants through nucleic acid detection. Therefore, it is urgent to develop highly sensitive and highly specific detection method for different application scenes, such as on-site, high-throughput and automated detection, to realize the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. At present, researchers have used clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-based nucleic acid detection technology combined with lateral flow strips and other technologies to establish a variety of diagnostic method for SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-2 variants, which can be applied to different scenes and regions. In this article, we summarize the research progress of CRISPR-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic method.

CRISPR/Cas system; SARS-CoV-2; nucleic acid detection technology; SARS-CoV-2 variants