Wuhan to world: The COVID-19 pandemic
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology
Abstract
COVID-19 is a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), caused by SARS-CoV-2, a
novel virus which belongs to the family Coronaviridae. It was first reported in December
2019 in theWuhan city of China and soon after, the virus and hence the disease got spread
to the entire world. As of February 26, 2021, SARS-CoV-2 has infected ~112.20 million
people and caused ~2.49 million deaths across the globe. Although the case fatality rate
among SARS-CoV-2 patient is lower (~2.15%) than its earlier relatives, SARS-CoV (~9.5%)
and MERS-CoV (~34.4%), the SARS-CoV-2 has been observed to be more infectious and
caused higher morbidity and mortality worldwide. As of now, only the knowledge regarding
potential transmission routes and the rapidly developed diagnostics has been guiding the
world for managing the disease indicating an immediate need for a detailed understanding
of the pathogen and the disease-biology. Over a very short period of time, researchers have
generated a lot of information in unprecedented ways in the key areas, including viral entry
into the host, dominant mutation, potential transmission routes, diagnostic targets and their
detection assays, potential therapeutic targets and drug molecules for inhibiting viral entry
and/or its replication in the host including cross-neutralizing antibodies and vaccine
candidates that could help us to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the
current review, we have summarized the available knowledge about the pathogen and
the disease, COVID-19. We believe that this readily available knowledge base would serve
as a valuable resource to the scientific and clinical community and may help in faster
development of the solution to combat the disease.
Description
Keywords
SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, coronaviruses, transmission, diagnostics, therapeutics