Support of intelligent emergent materials to combat COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection transmitted via human to human and cause lifethreatening respiratory diseases, has emerged as an everincreasing global health and economic crisis since its declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) in early Jan 2020. Despite the development of several vaccines and initiation of vaccination programs, it is very likely that we will have to continue our lives under now became normal preventative measures for several more years.While this global battle against the pandemic is carried out on the frontlines by healthcare providers, another major effort are underway by scientists and engineers in research labs around the globe for investigating better therapies, detection systems, and safety aspects. In this unprecedented scenario, experts are seeking fast, practical, and effective ways to support healthcare providers in treating patients and prevent or slow further spread of the virus. In this dazzling race against time, materials science is one of the fields that is contributing significantly, due to a substantial cumulative knowledge that can be translated rapidly to clinical practice. Novel material approaches of tunable performance can be useful for various multi-tasking applications such as accurate diagnosis of viral infection from patient samples, sanitizing or preventing viral accumulation on surfaces, alternative sources and sanitation for personal protective equipment, effective delivery and binding of antiviral agents to the virus, reprogramming of the immune system, and even development of injectable synthetic compounds to compete with the virus in binding to viral receptors.