Abstract
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has turned our own health and the world economy upside down. While several vaccine candidates are currently under development, antivirals with the potential to limit virus transmission or block infection are also being explored. Plant production platforms are being used to generate vaccines and antiviral proteins inexpensively and at mass scale. The following review discusses the biology and origins of the current coronavirus pandemic, and describes some of the conventional, synthetic, and plant-based approaches to address the challenge that it presents to our way of life.
Highlights
There is a lack of precise antiviral treatment and vaccines for COVID-19 currently [37]
A retrospective study on Ebola virus disease found that patients who were treated with favipiravir in addition to WHO-recommended supportive treatment showed an overall higher survival rate and time and a >100-fold reduction in viral load [65]
X-ray studies confirmed that there was a higher improvement rate in chest imaging of the favipiravir group as compared to the control group (91.43% vs. 62%) [68] Another randomized clinical trial of favipiravir on COVID-19 patients demonstrated an effective control with increase in seven days clinical recovery period from 55.86% to 71.43% [69]
Summary
The sub-family Coronavirinae is further divided into four genera based on serological and phylogenetic findings: Alphacoronaviruses, Betacoronaviruses, Gammacoronaviruses, and Deltacoronaviruses [5]. The. Alphacoronaviruses and Betacoronaviruses are infectious in mammals only while Gammacoronaviruses and Deltacoronaviruses are infectious in birds with some viruses infecting mammals as well [6]. Coronaviruses consist of emerging viruses such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome-related CoV (SARS-CoV) of Southern China (2003), the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related CoV (MERS-CoV) of Saudi Arabia (2012) [9,10] and SARS-CoV-2, the recently identified coronavirus in the Wuhan City of. Among the coronaviruses known to infect humans, MERSCoV, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 have the potential to cause severe disease while OC43, 229E, NL63, and HKU1 display mild symptoms [13]. SARS-CoV-2 is seventh among the coronaviruses that infect humans [14].
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