The epidemiology and pathogenesis of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by SARS-COV2 and represents the causative agent of a potentially fatal disease that is of great global public health concern. Based on the large number of infected people that were exposed to the wet animal market in Wuhan City, China, it is suggested that this is likely the zoonotic origin of COVID-19. Person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 infection led to the isolation of patients that were subsequently administered a variety of treatments. Extensive measures to reduce person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 have been implemented to control the current outbreak. Special attention and efforts to protect or reduce transmission should be applied in susceptible populations including children, health care providers, and elderly people. In this review, we highlights the symptoms, epidemiology, transmission, pathogenesis, phylogenetic analysis and future directions to control the spread of this fatal disease.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Pathogenesis; Pneumonia; Wuhan city.

Figure 1

The chronological incidence of COVID-19 infections and death cases in China. Infections with COVID-19 appears in December 2019. At the time of preparing this manuscript, February 16, 2020 there have been 51,174 people who have contracted the infection in China, and more than 1666 people have died.

Fig. 2

The systemic and respiratory disorders caused by COVID-19 infection. The incubation period of COVID-19 infection is approximately 5.2 days. There are general similarities in the symptoms between COVID-19 and previous betacoronavirus. However, COVID-19 showed some unique clinical features that include the targeting of the lower airway as evident by upper respiratory tract symptoms like rhinorrhoea, sneezing, and sore throat. Additionally, patients infected with COVID-19 developed intestinal symptoms like diarrhoea only a low percentage of MERS-CoV or SARS-CoV patients exhibited diarrhoea.