Coronavirus disease 2019: scientific overview of the global pandemic

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Genome sequencing of the virus revealed that it is a new zoonotic virus that might have evolved by jumping from bats to humans with one or more intermediate hosts. The immediate availability of the sequence information in the public domain has accelerated the development of quantitative RT-PCR-based diagnostics. Numerous clinical trials have been prioritized globally for testing new vaccines and treatments against this disease. This review provides a broad insight into different aspects of COVID-19, an introduction to SARS-CoV-2 mitigation strategies and the present status of diagnostics and therapeutics.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cov-2; SARS; coronavirus; diagnostics; disease; global; pandemic; ssRNA; virus.

Fig. 1

(a) Schematic structure of virion of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with genomic RNA and its major structural proteins. (b) Schematic diagram of genomic organization of coronaviruses, rep1a (replicase polyprotein orf1a), rep1b (replicase polyprotein orf1b), S (spike protein), E (envelope protein), M (membrane protein), N (nucleocapsid protein), UTR (untranslated region), 30 kb refers to the length of the single-stranded RNA genetic material [14].

Fig. 2

Classification of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [2].