Abstract
The medical authority in China, especially in Wuhan city, reported on December 2019 a large number of highly fatal, rapidly spreading viral pneumonia caused by an unknown coronavirus. The common history of all the patients was their visiting a Wuhan's whole food store, where live animals and seafood are sold. Irrespective of the efforts of the Chinese authorities, the virus spread rapidly all over the world by travelers, provoking widespread attention by the media and panic. Many previous coronavirus epidemics had been recorded, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and the recently newly discovered epidemic is named coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19). This disease is caused by SARS Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), and this virus is antigenically related to the SARS virus (SARS-CoV), which had been detected in 2002, depending on clinical, serological, and molecular findings. There is rapid competition among the researchers to discover the source of the virus, understand the mechanism of the disease development, establish treatment strategies, and determine the factors affecting the incidence of infection and severity of the disease, and focus on the production of a vaccine. Coronaviruses are a group of single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome viruses; its genome length varies from 26 to 32 kb. Coronavirus causes mild to severe respiratory disorders. In December 2019, several cases of pneumonia of unknown causes were found in Wuhan city, which is located in the Hubei province in China. Chinese health authorities investigated the problem and found that a new virus caused such infection and, using next-generation sequencing, found the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). It has been transferred from humans to humans and animals to humans (zoonotic). Coronaviruses cause multiple respiratory problems, varying from common cold to severe infections such as SARS. General symptoms of infection include fatigue, cough, and breathing problems such as shortness of breath, as described by World Health Organization. Serious cases may result in pneumonia, renal failure, and even death. We address current information about the new SARS Coronavirus-2 as well as the COVID-19 disease caused by it in this review.
Highlights
Coronaviruses can infect a wide range of hosts such as cattle, pigs, horses, turkeys, cats, rats, dogs, and humans
By the 10th of January 2020, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 genomic sequence was detected for the first time; it appeared as new identified form of beta-CoV, and the genetic identity between the sequenced samples obtained from the origin of the outbreak in Wuhan matches by more than 99.98%
According to the phylogenetic analysis, the receptor-binding domains (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a mutated strain of its most closely related bat virus, RaTG13 (Rhinolophus affinis) [35]. Due to this close relation, the SARS-CoV-2 was believed to infect people from bats after mutation. This mutation upregulated the RBD affinity to angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE-2) in humans and some animals like ferrets and Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica; an ant-eating mammal, which is illegally sold for traditional use in Chinese medicine), where it acts as intermediate hosts of SARS-CoV-2 [33], and decreased the affinity of RBD to ACE-2 found in civets and rodents
Summary
Coronaviruses can infect a wide range of hosts such as cattle, pigs, horses, turkeys, cats, rats, dogs, and humans These viruses cause serious diseases in humans such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and pneumonia and other mild diseases such as common cold as well as those affecting the gut. Until December 2019, the number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans was six: HCoV-NL63, HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43, and HKU1, which cause mild diseases in immunocompetent patients with common cold manifestations. During December 2019, a new beta coronavirus was found in China [named 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) at this time] and caused numerous cases of pneumonia especially in Wuhan city. The latest contributions to finding functional vaccines and treatments have been described
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