Abstract
The outbreak of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic caught the world by surprise in late 2019 and has held it hostage for months with an increasing number of infections and deaths. Although coronavirus was first discovered in the 1960s and was known to cause respiratory infection in humans, no information was available about the epidemic pattern of the virus until the past two decades. This review addresses the pathogenesis, transmission dynamics, diagnosis, management strategies, the pattern of the past and present events, and the possibility of future outbreaks of the endemic human coronaviruses. Several studies have described bats as presumptive natural reservoirs of coronaviruses. In essence, the identification of a diverse group of similar SARS coronaviruses in bats suggests the possibility of a future epidemic due to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-like) coronaviruses originating from different reservoir hosts. The study also identified a lack of vaccines to prevent human coronavirus infections in humans in the past, however, the recent breakthrough in vaccine discovery and approval for emergency use for the treatment of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 is commendable. The high rates of genomic substitution and recombination due to errors in RNA replication and the potential for independent species crossing suggest the chances of an entirely new strain evolving. Therefore, rapid research efforts should be deployed for vaccination to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent a possible future outbreak. More sensitization and enlightenment on the need to adopt good personal hygiene practices, social distancing, and scientific evaluation of existing medications with promising antiviral effects against SARS-CoV-2 is required. In addition, intensive investigations to unravel and validate the possible reservoirs, the intermediate host, as well as insight into the ability of the virus to break the species barrier are needed to prevent future viral spillover and possible outbreaks.
Highlights
The increase in the emergence and reemergence of contagious pathogens is a serious threat to public health globally [1]
The infection cycle of human coronaviruses is usually preceded by viral attachment to a specified receptor and human cellular entry aided by surface glycoprotein spikes
Several studies established the spread of SARS-CoV-2 was a more closely related coronavirus (SARS)-CoV-2 among humans [84]; this was corroborated by an investigation where five out of six members of a family, with travel history from Shenzhen to Wuhan but who did not visit the Wuhan Market on 29 December 2019 nor had any contact with animals, acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection
Summary
The increase in the emergence and reemergence of contagious pathogens is a serious threat to public health globally [1]. Coronaviruses are a diverse viral group that infects humans and a wide variety of to meet the demand for food by the rapidly growing human population as well as the rapid wildlife, including cattle,habitats camels,due pigs, bats, and birds. Coronaviruses are non-segmented, positive-sense single-stranded enveloped viruses genome known [5] This viral group possesses a nucleocapsid comprised of genome RNA with genome dimensions of about 26–32 kilobases, usually the largest. The virus was officially described by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) as “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2)” [16,17] based on information unveiled by scientific clinical research
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