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Review
. 2020 Mar 28;30(3):313-324.
doi: 10.4014/jmb.2003.03011.

Current Status of Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, and Vaccines for Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Dae-Gyun Ahn  1 , Hye-Jin Shin  1 , Mi-Hwa Kim  1   2 , Sunhee Lee  1 , Hae-Soo Kim  1 , Jinjong Myoung  3 , Bum-Tae Kim  1 , Seong-Jun Kim  1
Affiliations
Review

Current Status of Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, and Vaccines for Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Dae-Gyun Ahn et al. J Microbiol Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which causes serious respiratory illness such as pneumonia and lung failure, was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, China. The etiological agent of COVID-19 has been confirmed as a novel coronavirus, now known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is most likely originated from zoonotic coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV, which emerged in 2002. Within a few months of the first report, SARS-CoV-2 had spread across China and worldwide, reaching a pandemic level. As COVID-19 has triggered enormous human casualties and serious economic loss posing global threat, an understanding of the ongoing situation and the development of strategies to contain the virus's spread are urgently needed. Currently, various diagnostic kits to test for COVID-19 are available and several repurposing therapeutics for COVID-19 have shown to be clinically effective. In addition, global institutions and companies have begun to develop vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19. Here, we review the current status of epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and vaccine development for COVID-19.

Keywords: 2019-nCoV; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; coronavirus; outbreak.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China, as of 15 March, 2020. Sudden increase of the cases in China on February 17 is due to the change in COVID-19 diagnostic criteria.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Global distribution of COVID-19 confirmed cases, as of 15 March, 2020. Distribution of the confirmed cases of COVID-19 in each country is presented in the diagram.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 outside of China, as of 15 March, 2020.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 in South Korea, as of 15 March, 2020. Blue bar represents the cumulative confirmed cases before the indicated date. Red bar represents the newly confirmed cases at the indicated date.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
A representative diagram showing currently available diagnostic primer sets on SARS-CoV-2 genome. Numbers represent genome positions according to SARS-CoV-2 isolate Wuhan-Hu-1 (GenBank: MN908947.3). Each primer set for the diagnosis was indicated by grey arrows.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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